Note: The following thoughtful piece is an excerpt from a longer article published in the May/June 2008 issue of Tikkun Magazine, which featured a number of articles reflecting on the 60th anniversary of the national of Israel. The full article is available here.

By Dr. Omid Safi

I begin my reflections on the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of the modern nation state of Israel, alongside the events commemorated by Palestinians as the Nakba (The Catastrophe), with a reminder of an event that at first sight might seem unrelated: Barack Obama’s March 2008 speech entitled “A More Perfect Union” that called for addressing racial issues in the United States.

In this speech Barack Obama, a Christian spiritual progressive who would surely find a home among many committed to the Tikkun ideals, spoke about how there is no way for us to immediately and magically get beyond our racial divisions. There is, however, a way for us to begin addressing issues of racial justice by confronting systematic injustices inflicted upon black communities as well as the real economic anxieties of white communities.

Obama stressed that we can “address our past without becoming victims of our past.” It is in this spirit that I wish to address the Palestinian/Israel situation/tragedy. Jews have historically been persecuted and marginalized as few other communities in the history of the West have been. The rise of Zionism in many ways was a response to this persecution. While Zionism did begin with European Jews, it is in many ways part and parcel of the same milieu that saw the rise of other nationalist movements. For many Jews, the desire to return to what they have seen as their ancestral homeland is also real, and was a joyous cause for celebration after centuries of exile. Furthermore, there is little doubt that the establishment of the state of Israel has had a positive impact on the survival of Judaism—and Jews—in the Western world that for far too long had attempted to eradicate them. Furthermore, the concerns of the Israeli civilian community for genuine and meaningful security are real, and must also be addressed.

And yet part of our attempt to see with two eyes, hear with two ears, and yet feel with one heart is to recognize and remember that the same establishing of Israel is remembered differently, radically differently, by Palestinians. Going back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, there has been a history of colonial support for the creation of Israel that remains for many Arabs and Muslims a painful reminder of centuries of oppressive foreign occupation and domination. The establishment of Israel in 1948 involved the forceful and violent ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homelands (see Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld 2006). The homes and lands of these indigenous Arab inhabitants of Palestine were confiscated and handed over to Jewish immigrants. In a matter of two generations, Palestinians who had made up 90 percent of the inhabitants of Palestine were forced to become a persecuted minority in their own homeland, or perpetually homeless exiles, much as Jews themselves had been for centuries before. The other major act of injustice on the part of Israel has been the forty-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, combined with draconian measures that inflict collective punishments upon Palestinians, in both the occupied territories and inside Israel itself. These systematic injustices too are real, and the subhuman condition that many Palestinians live in must be addressed if words like justice are to rise above being hollow mockeries of their lofty reality.

All of this is well known. And yet our point is quite simple: if we are to have a common future for all of us in this sacred land, there must be a just and compassionate way to atone for these atrocious realities of the past and the present.

I write these words not as a nationalist, but as a person of faith who remains convinced that the Divine qualities of al-Rahman and al-Rahim, the Compassionate and the Forgiving Merciful, are the two greatest Divine qualities that human beings can and should embody. I write as one of many who are certain that forgiveness and reconciliation are indeed possible, as they were in South Africa, so long as the reconciliation is an exercise in Truth and Reconciliation. The truth must be told, as bitter as it might be for some of us to speak it, and as unpleasant for others of us to hear it. Yet if we are understand one another’s realities, we have to grant that the same truth that brings joy to some members of humanity has caused immense pain and suffering for others....

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To download and read the remainder of this article as published in Tikkun Magazine, click here.

Labels: islam, israel, obama, omid safi, palestine