Baka Lefties Again

In my post on Baka Lefties, I challenged the progessives who live in Baka (myself included) to recognize the morally problematic nature of living one's life in a house whose owners were expelled, and who will never receive compensation, at least not in our lifetimes. That post generated a certain amount of comment, although I must say that the only "Baka Lefty" I know of who responded was Deborah Greniman, and she raised some good points, which I will address below.

In my post I suggested that it would be a good idea to have the owners who have moral qualms about living in areas where the Palestinian owners were expelled to try to organize and to reach out to the original Palestinian owners, or more probably, their heirs, or, for that matter, the Palestinian people as a whole, and try to arrange some sort of interim settlement, symbolic or otherwise. I realize that there are many problems with the suggestion. But I wanted to open a discussion of what can be done.

I was misunderstood on several fronts, so here are some clarifications. But first, a story:

I have a friend who has become "green". But he drives every day to work, and that makes him feel guilty. He could take the subway but it would take him twenty minutes longer to get to work, and, frankly, it is not as convenient. He recently sold his SUV (his green consciousness is pretty recent) and got a Toyota Prius hybrid. But he still drives.

Now some people would say that my friend is hypocritical: if helping the environment were that important to him, he would not drive to work at all, they say. In fact, there are probably many things that he could do to reduce his carbon footprint. I mean, some people will die because of the environment, and he will be, in effect, helping to kill them and crying about it later.

I feel sorry for people who use that sort of argument against my friend. They don't realize – at least not when they are engaged in polemics -- that morality covers an enormous amount of grey area, that for most of that area there is no simple moral calculus to determine what is right and wrong, and that there can be areas of moral agreement and disagreement. There is a large area covered by "moral qualms," or "moral unease", which is weaker than "moral disapprobation," and over which there will be a lot of disagreement.

I used to drive on Highway 443, a highway that connects Jerusalem to Modi'in which was built on Palestinian land, and which is effectively closed to Palestinians, causing them enormous inconvenience. After thinking about the road, I decided that given the way I feel, I shouldn't use it. At first, I avoided the road unless there was a traffic jam on Highway 1, in which case I went back to 443. After all, does my use of the road make a single bit of difference to the Palestinians who can't drive on it, or to the other Israelis who can? I asked myself. Lately, however, I have been sitting in traffic jams at Sakharov rather than take the alternative route. (Serves me right for reading Gideon Levy.) But I may go back to the road, some day. Hypocritical? Yes, I suppose. But only if I feel that not using that road under any but emergency circumstances is a clear-cut moral imperative. Only if I criticized others for using it and then proceeded to use it myself.

Now, I am sure that there are people who won't buy houses in Baka because their Palestinian owners were never compensated. I salute such people, just as my friend who bought the Prius salutes those who don't drive to work at all. But there are many reasons why we do the things we do, and there are lots of factors that we weigh, when we choose neighborhoods or cars.

It is clear to me that the responsibility – legal and moral -- for compensation to the Arab refugees who left abandoned property devolves on Israel as a whole, not on the individuals living in Arab houses or on Arab lands throughout the country. Just how that compensation is to be paid and to whom is a matter for a whole different post. If you don't think the question is complicated, then you haven't been following the question of Holocaust reparations, or for that matter, the case of the Native Americans against the US government for misusing their trust funds , which is an even more egregious crime than appropriating people's houses.

I don't criticize others for not sharing my moral qualms. But I would still argue that accepting the status quo and not trying to do something about it is morally insufficient. Or, to be more modest, I still don't see how it is morally sufficient.

Let's look at this another way. Suppose there is a young Pole who learns that the house he bought, from another Pole, who bought it from still another Pole, was originally the property of a Jew, who never got compensated for it. And suppose that this young Pole feels some moral qualms about it. And suppose, finally, that he attempts to locate the owners, or that he makes a documentary film about the house, or something of this sort. Would we Jews be so quick to dismiss this guy as hypocritical or as acting from impure motives or even as acting inappropriately? When we invited him to show his film at the Jerusalem Cinematheque, would we argue that the idea of making a film was wrong, that what he really should have done was to influence the Polish government to recognize its collective responsibilities?

Or would we have said that this is a good Pole. He didn't have to do what he did, to be sure, but we admire him for doing it.

Now, to Deborah's comments:

1. "The responsibility isn't individual; it is collective." On that I agree. But I believe that there is a greater obligation – or if that is too strong, greater cause for moral unease -- on the part of those who benefit more from the expulsion than those who don't, especially if they view it as expulsion. The way that this unease is expressed need not, of course, be in reaching out to the original owners or to their representatives. But why not make this a person-to-person initiative, especially if the people on the other side are receptive? As I wrote, I know of somebody who came to an agreement with the owners. Is what he did wrong-headed?

2. "Living in Baka makes me feel a little less self-righteous with respect to the settlers. Like them, I too, live on contested land." The fact that the settlers and we Baka lefties are in some respects in the same boat should make me more critical of myself, and not less critical of them. My Prius–driving friend doesn't criticize his SUV-driving friends less because he didn't give up his car. Being self-righteous is never a good thing. But cutting someone too much slack in order to salve your conscience isn't great either.

3. "It makes more sense to focus energies on better ways of making life liveable for Palestinian Jerusalemites." Amen to that. I am sure that there are lots of things more pressing than reaching out to people who abandoned their property sixty years ago. I wasn't offering my proposal as "drop-everything-let's-do-this". All I wished to do was to get people to start thinking about how we can help raise the consciousness of folks on this issue, beginning with ourselves. Zokhrot is one answer, but not the only answer.

There is every reason in the world to prefer addressing present injustices than to deal with past injustices. But if we Baka Lefties deny or rationalize the past injustices, for which we are not responsible, but from which we indirectly benefit (and all of us humans indirectly benefit from injustices, no matter how hard we try), then aren't we missing an opportunity here?

Baka Lefties

Hell hath no fury like a settler criticized by the liberal Zionist.

The settler looks disdainfully at the liberal Zionist and says, “We are doing in Judea and Samaria what you guys did for a century throughout the Land of Israel.” If the Zionist leftie happens to live in a formerly Arab neighborhood, like Jerusalem's Katamon, Baka, Talbieh – or in Sheikh Munis, the Arab village where Tel-Aviv University sits today -- the settler gloatfully throws this at him: “You guys are worse than we are. At least we built settlements on land where nobody ever lived. You live in Arab houses."

At this point, the liberal Zionist generally sputters in outraged response: “There is no comparison. Where we live is internationally recognized, albeit de facto, as part of the state of Israel. Even the Palestinian national leadership has recognized Israel’s right to the lands within the pre-67 borders, or at least it doesn’t demand more than this. What was done by a Zionist movement in pursuit of independence, and during a war, cannot be compared to the actions of a sovereign state after independence and during peace time. Moreover, the actions of the settlers thwart the possibility of a two-state solution.” Some may even add that they are willing to move out of their formerly Arab neighborhoods in the case of a peace settlement, provided they get fair compensation.

Yada, yada, yada....

All this is well and good when discussing the behavior of states and their citizens. But I want to talk in this post about personal morality,. And I will start with myself.

I am a Baka Leftie. I live in that part of South Jerusalem that Gershom Gorenberg and Haim Watzman write so elegantly from and about in their South Jerusalem blog. Baka was a Palestinian middle to upper-class neighborhood before 1947; after the war it was used to house Jewish immigrants from North Africa. Some of those original immigrants still live in Baka, although many have died or moved elsewhere. The neighborhood has been undergoing “gentrification” for over two decades, with a lot of the old properties bought up, at outrageous prices, by American and French absentee owners. Local residents, less well-off, have purchased flats in the shikunim (“projects”) that are slowly being renovated, at least on the outside. These owners include a fair number of liberal American Jews who made aliyah in the seventies and the eighties. Not all the lefties are Anglos. Aging Peace-Now activists like the philosophers Avishai Margalit and Menachem Brinker live in Baka, though you won’t seem them frequenting synagogues like Yedidya, Shira Hadasha, bastions of the Anglo-orthodox left, or Kol ha-Neshama of the Anglo-reform left.

Now I don’t live inside an Arab house, but I do live on top of one; my flat was built around ten years ago on somebody’s roof. Needless to say, the Palestinian owner of the roof didn’t get a penny from the purchase. I have no idea who he or she is/was. I can console myself with the idea that I am not living inside his house. But so what -- I am living on a roof that does not belong to me, utilizing air rights that don’t belong to me.

So how do I justify this to myself morally? The answer is that I can't. It took me thirty years to realize that there is no justification. Of course, there are a lot worse things than what I am doing, but that doesn't make me feel better. Robert Fulghum said it best: One of the things we learn in kindergarten is not to take things that don’t belong to us. Living in a house which was taken from the owners is stealing. It’s that simple. True, others do it all the time. But so what?

After forty years it is time that the "Baka Lefties" get together and discuss the problem, critically and honestly. Preferably that discussion should be with Palestinian groups.

Several years ago I privately began inquiries with Palestinians to see if I could find the original owners of the house on which I live. What would I have done had I found them? Well, first of all, I would have apologized for living on top of their house. Second, I would have tried to come to a a financial understanding with them that would not prejudice any future claims they would have to state-compensation. And third, and more basically, I would ask their permission to live on top of their house.

I did all this without telling anybody, including my family, who gave me hell for not involving them. I wasn't very successful. Since then I heard that an acquaintance of mine, who lives in Talpiyot, had successfully done the same thing. I am not at the liberty to divulge his name, especially since I haven’t spoken with him about it. But when I was making my inquiries as to the owners, I was encouraged by the Palestinians with whom I was in contact (with the notable exception of the London-based Salman Abu Sitta, who told me to give up the whole project, and just support a group like Zochrot.)

I think the time has come to organize. There is now a critical mass of Baka Lefties –and not just Baka Lefties, but Israelis of all sort, who, I believe, would be willing to try to attempt some sort of encounter between settlers and refugees. Perhaps we should try to work through Zochrot; perhaps somebody has a better idea of proceeding.

But we must stop saying that this is only a matter for the government. If we wait for the government to do something about the injustice, we will die waiting. And, frankly, as bad as I feel about living on top of somebody else’s house, without his or her knowledge, or permission, I feel a lot worse about living out my life and dying there.

Liberal guilt? You bet. But I am tired of hearing facile raitonalizations. I see no reason why I have to wait for other people in order for me to do the right thing.

Help me out here, ye gang of agin' sixties activists! Let’s do something about this thing before we are sent to Baka old-age homes -- which also belong to Arab refugees.

Shabbat Shalom

Home for the Holidays

I have been away from home for a long time now, but the semester is over and my flight is today. I am going home to Jerusalem, to Baka.

Stay tuned for my next post, which will be about "Baka Leftists". I am sure the reference will be understood by some of my readers, but for those who don't: Baka is a neighborhood in South Jerusalem which was overwhelmingly Arab (upper middle class) until 47-8; then it was occupied by Israel, and the homes were made available, for the most part, to immigrants from North Africa. Like other places in Jerusalem, it has been undergoing gentrification, and there is a high percentage of professional (and academic) Israelis who live there now, alongside the residents from the "oriental" communities. Many of the new residents are politically liberal, even leftwing.

Baka is the original Arabic name for the neighborhood; Israeli official attempts to Hebraize it with "Geulim" have failed, except at the Baka -- oops, Geulim -- postoffice on Derekh Bet Lechem.

My home is on top of a Palestinian's former home, and my next post will be, inter alia, about that.

The "Forgotten Refugees" -- Jewish Refugees from Arab Lands

The NY Times reported yesterday on the efforts of a group, "Justice for Jews from Arab Countries," to get recognition for what they call the "forgotten refugees," those Jews who left Arab lands as a result of discrimination, persecution, etc., and whose property was expropriated, etc. The focus of the group will not be demands for compensation, but rather recognition, especially in the United Nations, where the Palestinian refugee problem is often on the agenda, and the origins of the problem commemorated.

In so far as this group wishes to address the violated rights of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands, I applaud its efforts, and I urge all supporters of the Palestinian national movement to join. In fact, I think the demands of the group should not just stop at recognition, but should include compensation and the right to return to Arab countries. Although it is wrong to equate the exodus of Palestinians with those of the Jews for several reasons -- primarily, because the Jewish exodus was encouraged by the Zionists as part of the "ingathering of the Exiles" -- that does not reduce the responsibility of the Arab countries for the forced emigration and expropriation, nor does it eliminate the pain of leaving one's ancestral home, losing property, etc.

The Canadian former minister of Justice, Irwin Cotler, a noted Zionist and international expert in human rights, who will be speaking at the group's conference, was quoted as saying:

“I know this may sound Pollyannaish, but I believe that if we allow people to understand the truth of what occurred, then they will be able to recognize the other,” he said. “Right now the other is being demonized.”

I agree with Mr. Cotler. From the Palestinian standpoint, any discussion of the rights of refugees to recognition, compensation, and repatriation, can only help raise the awareness of people, including Israelis, that there is no statute of limitations with respect to fundamental injustices. By embracing the cause of the Jewish refugees, the friends of the Palestinians should emphasize the similarities but also the differences between the two exoduses: one group was expelled from its home; another group was expelled to its home, at least according to Zionist and traditional Jewish ideology, and in many cases, into the physical homes of the expelled Palestinian refugees.

The most significant difference between the two exoduses is that the Palestinian refugee problem was caused by the Zionist refusal to allow the Palestinians to return to their homes, but the Palestinians were not at all responsible for the expulsion of the Jews from Arab countries; on the contrary, they also suffered from it. The idea that future compensation to be paid to the Palestinian refugees should be reduced by the compensation for the Jewish refugees, an idea apparently accepted by the PA negotiators, is horrendous. The Arab states should pay, not the Palestinians.

It is the significant differences that caused me to raise my eyebrows when I read that, according to the Times,

Another objective is to push for early passage of resolutions introduced in the United States Senate and House that say that any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees in any official document must be matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees.

Inasmuch as this forced and artificial balance serves a rightwing and anti-Palestinian agenda, it is offensive to both groups. The Zionists have always accused the Arab countries of using the Palestinian refugees as pawns in propaganda warfare; supporters of Israel should not be doing the same with the Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Injustices on both sides should be redressed by the appropriate parties and not forgotten. But one group should not suffer at the expense of the other.