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Wednesday Jun 10, 2009
The Persian Abyss: The Nazareth model of Jewish-Arab coexistence
Posted by A.A. Sheida
Comments: 37
    
One of the most surprising facts I learned during my visit to Israel was how often people use the word Yallah. I asked my Israeli friends if they know what it means. Few of them knew the origin of the word. I explained to them that the word comes from Ya Allah, which literally means Oh God. I don't need to tell them that Allah is not the 'Jewish' God. The irony is lost on my Israeli friends. For them, Yallah is an Israeli word!  The picture is from a movie which was on my mind Walking through one of the main streets in Tel Aviv, I was surprised to see a billboard that read: "Falafel: National Snack of Israel." Shouldn't the national snack of the Jewish state be Jewish food? I wonder if a person who was born in Israel and who has never visited an Arab country, actually thinks that Falafel was invented in Israel! For a country eager to advance its European/Jewish character, Israel has comfortably taken on the slang and snacks of the Arab world. I took an opportunity to go on a tour of northern Israel. Our tour guide was an enthusiastic middle-aged man, fashioning a white beard and a baseball hat. He sat at the front of the bus facing the passengers and talked for as long as anybody was willing to listen to him. His favorite phrase was "we built all of this on top of the desert," which he repeated while pointing to different farms, water facilities, and villages along the road. This must be a favorite slogan of the Zionist revolution, I guess. It is indeed impressive what Israelis have done. They have manage to build a modern country with very hard work. When it comes to building impressive structures in the desert dunes, however, the Sheiks of Dubai are way ahead of the Israelis. The theme hammered by our tour guide continued to distract me from the beautiful scenery. I know, after all, that the Greater Palestine was not all desert. There were hundreds of thousands of people living here. People who were expelled or fled, and were not allowed back into their homes. There were thousands of villages which were "wiped off the map." Can Israelis ever face up to the fact that their state was built on other people's homes? If so,will they be ready to deal with the responsibility that comes with that? Or is the only way to legitimize the Zionist movement is to deny that there was ever such a thing as Palestinians? Like the main character of Waltz with Bashir, Israeli society seems to have completely forgotten about its past. From the way the tour guide spoke, I figured he had a lot more to say than what is allowed by his official capacity. Slowly I made my way towards the front of the bus and started talking to him during his breaks. He was quite excited to meet an Iranian. He told me that he served as a pilot in the IAF and had fought in several of Israel's wars. He told me many interesting stories from the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War. He got especially excited when we arrived at the Sea of Galilee. Pointing to the mountains on the other side of the sea, he says "I down a few Syrian plane there myself. The planes must still be at the bottom of the sea!" He surprised me by saying that Israel must give back the Golan Heights. Why? I ask. "Peace," he says. "We don't need the Golan. We need peace." He keeps repeating the last sentence, like a person watching a dream fading away. After a brief stop at Galilee, we turn around and head to Nazareth. We stop by one of the shops in the Bazaar. The owner is an elderly Palestinian man who spoke only Hebrew and Arabic. We exchanged a few words in Arabic until I ran out of Arabic phrases. I remembered a Palestinian song called Marmar Zamani and start singing it. He joined me and right about then, an old Jewish guy walks into the store. They call him al-majnun - the crazy one. "He has been coming to this shop for the past 35 years," another shopkeeper explained. I thought the Jews and Arabs were supposed to be fighting each other. Nobody told me that there were areas in Israel where Jews and Arabs live together, shop together, play backgammon together. We left Nazareth soon after, but the city charmed me. On the ride back to Tel Aviv, I fantasized about the Nazareth model of Jewish-Arab coexistence spreading through the the region competing in popularity with Falafel sandwiches!
1 |
Maverick,
Wednesday Jun 10, 2009
This is a well written and hopeful piece though one might differ concerning the number of people living in the area before 1948. I prefer the author's portrayal of Nazareth to the two-state solution but politics is the art of only that which is possible. Regardless, let's hope for peace
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Shlomo, Haifa,
Wednesday Jun 10, 2009
Felafel is not an "Arab" snack, it is a Middle Eastern snack. It was eaten not only by Arabs, but by hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern Jews who were expelled from Arab countries in the 20th century, came to Israel, and whose descendants now make up the majority of Israel's population. Felafel is their food just as much as it is Arab food.
3 |
GG,
Wednesday Jun 10, 2009
Education education education people. I guess the arabs dont remember on whos territory they buit there tents before 1948! hehe. The tour guide just doesn't care or is in denile like many israelis about the real history and the iranian cares more about where what came first and who built it better than the fact that many jewish communities around the world live with tension under the surface with other goyim. surprise! Muslims couldn't live with jews because they consider them infidels and if they are they are just takeing advantage.
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Herb, Silver Spring, Maryland,
Wednesday Jun 10, 2009
Only a very small portion of Israel was built on other people's homes: people who lost theirs trying to commit genocide -- poetic justice. As for giving up the Golan for peace, with the Syrians digging in tens of thousands of rockets aimed at Tel Aviv and Haifa, mostly equipped with their chemical warheads, it would be annihilation, not peace. Furthermore, the Nazareth model of Jewish-Arab coexistence can only exist in a state with an overwhelming Jewish majority. Otherwise it is dhimmitude (subjugation to Arab dominance and persecution) or slaughter.
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Tzvi/amerikkka,
Wednesday Jun 10, 2009
there are unfortunately millionsof arabs in israel so the author is incorrect to sat arabs were expelled from israel. How does the author know who invented falafel? It may have been invented by Jews living in arab countries before the Jews were expelled from the arab countries.
The shieks of dubai dont build anything. They hire dhimmis to do the building for them.
The real al majnun is the author of this stupid article
6 |
McQueen NYC,
Wednesday Jun 10, 2009
It is absurd for this Iranian to think he knows Israeli history better than the readers of the Jerusalem Post. This simplistic drivel is embarrassed and doesn't deserve to be published in an Israeli paper.
7 |
Jen USA,
Wednesday Jun 10, 2009
Herb, It is folks like yourself, who deny the damage done to the the people who lived in the villages of Palestine/Israel, when Israel was created & expanded, who are deluded. I happen to know a family of Christian Arabs who fled the fighting. Their village had Jews, Christians & Muslims. When they returned, they were told that their village was Jewish now... no Arabs! This happened all over Palestine/Israel. The generation that lived in the village is dying but their family still longs for Palestine. They have many Muslim and Jewish friends. They would love Nazareth. They love falafel, too.
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Fred, Vancouver Canada,
Wednesday Jun 10, 2009
The author seems to be ignorant of the fact that "Palestinians" is the name used in the past for Jewish inhabitants of Mandate Palestine. The Arabic alphabet does not even have a letter to represent the P sound after all! The whole purpose of the Mandate for Palestine was to create a Jewish home in the area occupied by the Jews in temple times, while respecting the religious rights of all inhabitants, Jew and gentile. Israel has a sovereign right under international law for the entire mandatory region, including Jordan and southern Lebenon up to the Litani river
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backstop,
Wednesday Jun 10, 2009
The Muslims have their own version of the "disappearing" past called Jahalia. This basic premise is that the precedents of Islam (i.e. Jews and Christians) were really Muslims. and their heritage does not matter because it was really Islam. While Jews can consider this absurd (look at all the historical/archeological evidence) it is still a central concept in Islam. Israelis do understand that others lived on areas of the land they currently control and many have legitimate claims. Islam does not recognize that the Jewish claim to the land is legitimate.
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JT,
Wednesday Jun 10, 2009
This entire piece is an attempt to impose the writer's conception of what Judaism and Zionism are on the facts. The Zionist idea was not to create a country that advanced a European character, but a Jewish one. He similarly declines to recognize the significant Jewish settlement of the territory that became Palestine long before Zionism was conceived as a modern political movement, as well as the half of Israel's Jewish population that stems from Arab and Islamic countries and may have brought a taste for felafel with them, as well as expressions like Ya'allah.
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NJ,
Wednesday Jun 10, 2009
Not a very well-researched piece at all. Falafel isn't "Arabic" food - it's Middle Eastern... there were few, if any trees in "Greater Palestine" (another fallacy - there was never a "Palestine" until 1967, much less for a "GREATER Palestine"!) because under the direction of the Ottoman Turks who ruled the area prior to it becoming the British Mandate of Palestine, chopped down trees with a ferocity and left the land stripped and bare.
Finally, the author's allusion to a one-state solution displays his ignorance of Jewish history in Islamic countries.
12 |
Jeff, Strasburg, PA USA,
Thursday Jun 11, 2009
I was on a tour of Israel in 1986 (pre-Oslo) and remember our Israeli Jewish tour guide bantering and being friendly with Arab shop-keepers in Bethlehem. Now that Bethlehem is under the Palestinian Authority, my guide couldn't even go there, and would be risking his life if he did. The pleasant and peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews that the writer touts only exists in lands under Israeli sovereignty. It seems to me that if one wants more peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews, that more land should be placed under Jewish sovereignty, and not less.
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Mike,
Thursday Jun 11, 2009
"For a country eager to advance its European/Jewish character, Israel has comfortably taken on the slang and snacks of the Arab world."
More than half of Israel's Jewish population are Jews who lived in the Arab cultural sphere, including cultures where falafel was eaten, it is an intrinsic part of their culture as well.
Israel is a blend of the Eastern and Western cultures that the Jews were dispersed in--what's the big deal?
One thing you don;t get in Arab countries is falafel with sauerkrau--that is a uniquely Israeli blend of Europe and the MidEast
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Said, London,
Thursday Jun 11, 2009
@backstop - Jahilia actually means ignorance and refers to the Arab polytheistic religion before the advent of Islam. Furthermore, the world Islam (as you should know by now) means submission. Jews and Christians submitted themselves to God's authority, hence they are "Muslims". It does not mean that they followed the religion of Islam, which actually crystallized into its current form some 200-300 years later after conquering Islamic armies came into contact with the local cultures of their subjects, most notably Persia.
15 |
Haifa,Israel,
Thursday Jun 11, 2009
I can't believe Jpost is printing this nonsense. I understand compared to the average mullah he seems moderate but it doesn't mean that he can print any slander that he sees fit. It's only speaking truth to power if what you are saying is truth after all. In any event I think he might spend some more time in his home country of Iran trying to help his own Arab minority who have in fact been displaced, tortured, killed, starved etc. [ Link to page ] I think you are the one who needs to deal with uncomfortable truths.
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Sharona Jerusalem Israel,
Thursday Jun 11, 2009
The Arab population of Israel was far less than the author implies in 1948. "Thousands" of villages were not destroyed. More Jewish refugees fked from Arab countries than left Israel. (850,000 vs 700,00) For the most part the Arab population that left did exactly that-left- they weren't expelled. There never were Palestinians. Many Arabs came from Arab countries when the Jews started creating job opportunities in the 1880s. Jerusalem was vastly majority Jewish in 1860! Dubai built an indoor ski resort where the temperature outside is 50C. Israel builds universities & hospitals
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Ben Fridman,
Thursday Jun 11, 2009
Beautiful article. Easy to read as the language tells a story in a really flowing and interesting style, with feelings that most human hearts can recognize . Although the author doesn't say much out of the ordinary on any controversial issues it seems comments these days always deteriorate into banal unscientific comments on history. "We were here first", "they didn't exist", "we didn't take much", one of these commenters even manages to indicate that Palestinians lost their homes when they tried to commit genocide on the immigrating Jews. After having _their_ villages attacked by the Irgun and others throughout the early stages of the inception of Israel, and the small island bantustans they now have left this seems a really misplaced comment indeed. If the anger displayed by most of the comments on just this article is anything to go by we are in a sorry state indeed.
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fonky wurm - ERETZ YISRAEL,
Thursday Jun 11, 2009
im gonna print this out, cut it up into little squares, and keep them in my bathroom...
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Yariv, USA,
Thursday Jun 11, 2009
What the writer does not understand is that we Israelis eat Falafel because we like it and we do not really care who invented what. We leave the stupid food-wars to the likes of the writer and his brethern ...
Likewise we eat any other of the great foods of the world (as long as it is kosher).
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Herbert Kaine, Hebron, Israel,
Thursday Jun 11, 2009
Mr Sheida, I suggest you visit Alexandria, Egypt, or Bagdad, Iraq, cities that were once one third Jewish. Their Jews were expelled beginning in 1941 by the AL Rashid revolt that predated our "occupation". You do not provide a compelling rationale to nuke Israel.
21 |
Gabor Frankl,
Thursday Jun 11, 2009
Ben Friedman - I believe you are engaging in discredited revisionist history pure and simple.
22 |
MS N,
Friday Jun 12, 2009
The difference between UAE and Israel is that UAE was built by cheep labour from Subcontinent, Western expertise, and investment from oil money whereas Israel was built by Israeli labour, Israeli expertise and foreign investment, although on Palestinian land.
23 |
Luc Hansen New Zealand,
Friday Jun 12, 2009
Ben Freidman, you are correct in your history and especially correct that we are in a sorry state indeed!
Also, the Jews in the Arab states were victims of Zionists just as were the Arabs of Palestine, and certainly their plight has nothing to do with settling with the Palestinians. And does Israel really want its secret role in that particular exodus examined?
Finally, Israelis trumpet their Israeli-Arabs as proof of co-existence with them, so why not go the whole way? You know, one country, one state? Happy ever after...
24 |
Victoria N. Canada,
Friday Jun 12, 2009
Peace has to be the goal for both Israelis and Arabs. It will happen only when the Arabs will accept the right of Israel to live in peace and security. Israeli kids don't learned to hate Arabs, they learn to respect all other nationalities. They also learn to love and fight for Israel. Israel for ever.
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Liora, NJ, USA,
Saturday Jun 13, 2009
Sheida asks "Can Israelis ever face up to the fact that their state was built on other people's homes?" Well, even if that was true, what would be so unique about that? Im a persian jew descended from people who had been in Persia for more than 2,500 years (well before the muslims). My family in Mashad were subjected to Pogroms and forcible conversion to Islam and finally all fled, leaving all their land and possession there. This story is repeated by countless jews from all over the muslim world who were expelled/killed etc. So whats so special about the so called 'palestinians' anyway?
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Liora, NJ, USA,
Saturday Jun 13, 2009
Mr Sheida seems amused by the fact that Israelis say Yallah and eat falafel. Whatever. Since moving to the US, I eat hot dogs and say "awesome" - so what? Anyway, at least half of all Israelis are ethnically middle eastern - who's to say who created the bloody falafel?
27 |
RB,
Saturday Jun 13, 2009
The author has a very shallow, Iranian perspective on the situation in Israel, but I do not blame him because it is hard for an outsider to understand.
28 |
Josh California,
Saturday Jun 13, 2009
Wow Israelis use "Yallah"!!
Arabs take:
Asalam Alaikam (Shalom Aleichem)
Barack (Baruch)
And slews of others!!!
29 |
Ran Israel,
Saturday Jun 13, 2009
actually, there is no such thing as a "Palestinian" people, it's a mainstream media fantasy.
Arabs followed Jews to the part of greater Syria now known as Israel for jobs starting in the late 1800's, before that you could count the number of people living in that barren land on your fingers.
Amazing how some people visit Israel and all they care about is their poltitically correct fantasy nonsense. Why bother visiting? Next time go somewhere else.
30 |
Chris USA,
Saturday Jun 13, 2009
How easily people overlook history. Did you know that under the Ottoman Empire if you so much as planted a tree in palestine you were taxed to death? Nothing was "developed" from the desert by the Arabs until after Israel arrived. Only prime land was developed by them. Israel may have "taken" that land but it also developed the desert into quality land as well.
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Genuine Tosefta, Tveria,
Saturday Jun 13, 2009
The author is completely off the mark with Ya-allah. It has the same origin as Ta-allh meaning "come" in the present and it has nothing to do with God. In this form Ya-allah means "come on." There is a separate expression in Arbaic of Yah-Allah which means "Oh God" but it has nothing to do with Ya-allah, just a coincidence of similar sounding words since in Arabic, like in ancient Hebrew, there are no written vowels, every word comes from a root source of three consonants to which any vowels and sometimes other consonants are inserted into it to create various forms of verb, adjective, noun.
32 |
John N. Ireland,
Saturday Jun 13, 2009
I think this is quite a interesting piece. Peace is something that Israel and the rest of the Middle East badly needs. I hope that respect for different faiths and traditions will come about in all your Nations. Hopefully all Jews, Christians and Muslims can live together and respect each other. As an big fan of Jpost, I have seen some horrible comments about faiths and their leaders in the comment sections. As a Catholic, my faith and the Pope is sometimes dismissed, but I never feel anger, just sadness. I wish that everyone would respect Israel, the other Nations of the ME and get along.
33 |
Roddy Frankel,
Sunday Jun 14, 2009
To #7, Jen:
It's folks like you who are deluded. Reality check: when my parents returned to their town of Czernovitz, Romania, their homes were taken by Romanian Christians who refused to even open their doors. There were no Jews left in a town that once had the largest Jewish population in Romania. But my parents moved on with their lives, despite their horrific experiences in the Nazi camps. In contrast, your Arab friends can return to Israel and become Israeli citizens, if they choose. The fact that they do not speaks more to their hatred of Jews than to any false claims of persecution.
34 |
Roddy Frankel,
Sunday Jun 14, 2009
To A.A. Sheida:
Your surprise at the presence of Arab culture in Israel only reveals how ignorant you are about Israelis. You assume that Israelis are transplanted Europeans (implying that they don't belong in the Middle East). What you ignore is the 50% of Israelis who originated from Arab countries (when they were evicted without compensation for their confiscated land.) A full 900,000 Arab Jews suffered this fate. They brought their food, music, dance, and culture, all inspired by the Arab countries they once called home. Why do we ignore these forgotten refugees?
35 |
Galilite, Australia,
Sunday Jun 14, 2009
Visit Haifa and Akko as well (make sure you don't leave without trying the hoummus in the Old City!!!). Jews and Arabs are more intertwined than you can imagine, and in the north (especially Galilee), there is not as much enmity as you would imagine.
36 |
Mushma Oule, Beersheva, Israel,
Monday Jun 15, 2009
This is indeed a beautiful country, and I hope you go on enjoying it and its contrasts. Some of us are nuts, as you can read in these comments. With regard to the fellow who said, All this was desert!: If you count from the beginning of just the modern phase of the Jewish national movement, about 130 years ago, Israel is one of the few places in the world to have increased rather than decreased its forestation and ground cover---and we're leading this greening of the desert by a very large margin. So we are justly proud of what weve done on our land since we got it back.
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Jen USA,
Tuesday Jun 16, 2009
#33 Roddy, You show your intolerance for other religions and cultures. It really is a shame. Perhaps you believe your hatred to be excusable because your parents were victimized so horribly. I will not accept that excuse. Hate breeds hate... it is up to you to find peace in your heart. I would think that you would have empathy for other displaced persons. No, my friends cannot return to Israel. They cannot return to their village. There is no right to return. There is no compensation. They have no hatred towards Jewish people & have many Jewish friends but will always despair of their loss.
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