John McCarthy seems like a nice chap. I quite
like his travel programme on Radio 4 on Saturday mornings, and he has that air
of affability and basic decency characteristic of the more liberally-minded
members of the English upper middle classes. And he seems admirably unbowed by
his hellish experience as a hostage in Lebanon.
So I was disappointed to hear him talking,
on this morning’s Andrew Marr Show, about his forthcoming documentary on 'the Palestinians
of Israel’(sic). Of course, I haven’t seen the programme, or read the accompanying
book, but from the few things McCarthy said by way of introduction, I could
tell that this was an intervention with a very definite agenda.
For a start, there’s that jarring title:
not the Arabs – the usual term - but the Palestinians of Israel. Not the Palestinians of the West Bank, or Gaza, but of Israel. This seemed to
be a political, and deliberately provocative choice. To me, it suggests that Arab
citizens of Israel are not simply an ethnic group among others but one with
nationalist claims to the land in which they live. It’s an odd term, because
there never was a country called ‘Palestine’, and Israeli Arabs have never
lived in a country with that name: except in the sense that it was a province
of the Ottoman Empire, and then a British Mandate – and in that sense, the Jews
of Israel have as much claim to be called ‘Palestinians’ as their Arab
neighbours. To which we must add the undeniable fact that the main reason there is no state called Palestine is that the Arabs rejected the two-state solution offered to them in 1948, preferring a war to deny the Jews their right to a homeland, a war they have continued and renewed at intervals ever since.
And maybe it’s just me, but to call the
Arabs of Israel ‘Palestinian’ also suggests that you think the land is somehow
‘really’ theirs - is really somewhere called ‘Palestine’ - and is yet another example
of well-meaning (?) western liberals effacing the existence of the state of
Israel. It’s almost as odd as it would be to call the Jews who live in Arab
countries ‘Israelis’: but then, of course, many Jews became Israelis precisely
because they were expelled from their homes in Arab countries such as Iraq, and
those who remain in countries like Egypt and Tunisia are feeling particularly
vulnerable right now, with the rise in antisemitism and religious
intolerance following last year’s revolutions. Not to mention the chilling
promise of some Palestinian leaders to ensure that any future Palestinian
state is Judenrein.
I may be wrong, but it doesn’t sound like
you’ll hear much about Arab antisemitism and the threats to Israel’s existence
in McCarthy’s documentary. On Marr, he talked about the image Israel has as the
Middle East’s only true democracy, and how his findings about the
treatment of its ‘Palestinian’ population undermined that claim. But Israel’s
democracy, which affords democratic rights to all its citizens, regardless of
ethnicity or religion, is a matter of fact, not conjecture. As is the poor democratic
record of literally every Arab and North African state. Israel is by no means
perfect, but when (say) European states have shortcomings in their treatment of
their minority populations, their democratic legitimacy is not usually called
into question.
At the same time, I wonder whether McCarthy’s
programme will introduce us to the Arab judges, politicians and soldiers who
serve their country (Israel) loyally? Or talk about how the lives of Arab
women, or Christians, or gays, are infinitely more free than they would be in
any Arab or Muslim country? Or balance its discussion of the lives of
‘Palestinians’ in Israel with the experience of Palestinian refugees in Arab
countries such as Lebanon or Syria, not to mention those countries’ callous
failure to allow those refugees to settle permanently, so that they can continue
to be used as a political tool to ‘shame’ Israel.
Finally, when Andrew Marr asked John
McCarthy what he thought were the current prospects for the peace process, the
latter thought the outlook was negative. Why? Because of Netanyahu’s
‘right-wing’ government. Now, I’m no fan of Netanyahu, and certainly not a
right-winger, but surely the more immediate threats to peace in
Israel/Palestine come from the continuing rocket attacks from Gaza, the tearing-up
of existing peace agreements and warlike noises from the emerging parties in
the new Egypt, not to mention the rejectionist propaganda spewing out of the
PA-controlled media in the West Bank?
Against this hostile background, Israel’s
treatment of its Arab citizens, while not perfect, is surely to be commended rather than condemned.
How many other countries in the region can claim to grant members of ethnic and
religious minorities comparable rights? And when will we see well-meaning western liberals making high-profile documentary films about them?