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So. Good afternoon and welcome, everybody.

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It's it's an honour and a pleasure and a personal pleasure to have to introduce to you Dr. Bashir Abu Mani, a speaker today.

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Dr. Abu Name is currently a reader in postcolonial literature in the School of English at the University of Kent.

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He took as many of you know, his dphil from Oxford, and his current research deals with topics such as global English literature of the Middle East,

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literary realism and modernism and literary and cultural theory, Marxist postcolonial and I guess otherwise.

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His most recent book is the Palestinian novel from 1948 to the present published by Cambridge University Press.

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And the title of his talk today is Habib's The Possibility Optimist in 1948.

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Thank you. Thank you all for coming. I'm very happy to be here.

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So I speak for around 40 minutes and then we can take some questions.

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So you mean Habib was a leading Palestinian writer? He was a journalist.

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He was a politician. He was a member of Knesset for the Communist Party for around 20 years.

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Weeks before he died, he said the following.

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He said, I write only when I am shaken, shaken to my core, and my way of crying is through the ink that comes out of the pen.

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I want to propose several things today that Habib is here referring to the Nakba,

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that the Nakba is the key structuring event in his literature that he writes to return to it,

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to register and mourn it, and to ruminate on its memory and its ongoing effects.

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That he reads the Nakba not only as a site of mass defeat, but as one of individual collapse,

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of subordination and crucially, of anxieties of culture and collaboration.

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That he also reads it as a site of future resistance,

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that he identifies it as the underlying cause of his intolerable living, of what he describes as the cotillion,

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the severance from everything you hold dear,

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that finally the Nakba generates the static fantasy that enables the struggle against political defeat and enables also self-determining agency.

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These are conceived in literary rather than political terms.

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It is the freedom to imagine and to write your own self that is sanctified and advocated.

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Nothing outside of that act can be trusted. This is ultimately Habib's literary project.

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If Habib spent most of his political life trying to attenuate, to rectify or to overcome the Nakba, calling,

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for example, for Palestinian rights recognition, self-determination against conquest and occupation.

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It is in literature where he dwells on the. What he dwells on morning.

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What he dwells on the everlasting pain of national.

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And also for him, familiar substance, raising the spectre that his political hopes won't materialise here.

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That is, neither collective freedom nor a clear political mechanism advocated or posited to overcome the Nakba.

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If politics for Habib was about struggle and about optimism, literature was about weakness,

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and it was also about the dearth of prospects for change and transformation.

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Such complex amalgamations as optimism captured Habib's contradictory imperatives,

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both struggling against reality and also submitting to it both realist and otherworldly, both present and disappeared, both captured and escaped.

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So as Habib has made literary testimony,

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the best of the optimist shows it is because of 1948 and of Israel's deepening settler colonial victory that Habib ultimately

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sees no possibility for worldly salvation for his imagined Palestinian protagonist in the novel goes by the name of Sayyid.

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At the end of the novel, he leaves Saeed sitting on a stake, waiting essentially for extraterrestrial salvation.

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So you have a portrait of an unrealistic character.

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If ever there was one good side, writing the story of his life and disappearance change his fate.

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That becomes the question motivating the novel.

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So that is the macabre condition that Habib describes in The Optimist, his most important literary work, which was published in 1974.

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So to give you a sense of how he writes the Nakba that I would like to read out a deeply consequential moment in the novel.

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It's not only a great example of how he was literary realism in The Optimist,

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in which can describe as individual destiny, typifies a historical collective change.

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But it is also a moment that embodies the whole narrative structure of the moment.

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Loss, human weakness and the tragedy of expulsion here,

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combined with the sadness of staying and also the sadness of being dominated by the short parts I

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want to read is from the ironically titled How Side First Participated in the War of Independence,

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not the Nakba. That's the title. It does have side as he's being driven back from the north to Haifa by his father's military

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contact and how the jeep this is the setting for the scene suddenly stops on the edge of acre.

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So as the Jewish driver and I start to quote jump from it like a shot gun in hand, he raced into the sesame stalks, parting them with his bones.

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I saw a peasant woman, the narrator says, crouching down there in her lap, a child, his eyes wide in terror, from which village demanded the governor.

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The mother, remain, crouching, staring at him askance, although he stood right over her huge as a mountain.

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From betwee, he yelled. She made no response, but continued to stare at him.

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He then pointed his gun straight at the child's head and screamed, Reply or I'll empty this into him.

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At this I tensed. Then I later says, ready to spring at him come what may.

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After all, the blood of youth surged hot within me at my age, then of 24, and not even a stone could have been unmoved at the sight.

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However, I recalled my father's final counsel and my mother's blessing, and then said to myself,

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I certainly shall attack him if he fires his gun, but so far he is merely threatening her.

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I remained I treading the woman dead. Reply Yes, from between.

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Are you returning there? He demanded. Yes, returning.

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Didn't we warn you here that anyone returning there will be killed?

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Don't you all understand the meaning of discipline? Do you think it's the same as chaos?

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Get up and run ahead of me. Go back anywhere you like to the east.

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And if I ever see you again on this road, I'll show you no mercy. No woman stood up and gripping her child by the hand set off towards the east.

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Not once looking back, her child walked beside her and he too never looked back at this point.

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And this is Habib's interpretation of the event. The narrator with through the narrator's voice, he says,

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At this point I observed the first example of that amazing phenomena that was to occur

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again and again until I finally met my friends from outer space for the father,

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the woman and child went from where we were, the governor and I standing and I standing in the jeep.

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The taller they grew, by the time they emerged with their own shadows in the sinking sun, they had become bigger than the plane of acre itself.

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The governor still stood there, awaiting their final disappearance while I remained huddled in the jeep.

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Finally, he asked in amazement, Will they ever disappear?

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The question, however, was not directed at me, Habibie later adds in the same chapter betwee is the village of the poet, of course, Mahmoud Darwish,

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who said, 15 years later, I, lord executioner Victor, over a dark eyed maiden,

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hurrah for the Vanquisher of villages, hurrah for the Butcher of Infants.

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Was he this very child? The narrator asks.

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Had he gone on walking eastward after releasing himself from his mother's hand, leaving her in the shadows?

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By this, I end this long episode in the novel, so I want to flag three issues about this encounter,

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essentially between a colonial official and a dispossessed refugee.

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First, the position of the narrator. Second, this idea, this notion that Palestinian history is seen here as refugee history, as a refugee story.

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And third, the last thing that literature resists historical injury.

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So I'll begin with the first one. Mm hmm. So first on Syed's behaviour and position, it is.

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There's no other words to describe it, is it? It is currently it is complicit and it is also contrary to the peasants own displacement.

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She's being pushed out as he's making his way back in.

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He does nothing to help her remain silent witnesses, essentially her expulsion, and thus acts on the side of her executioner.

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Crucially, this becomes very important. Historically, Sayyid is Habib himself nearly 40 years after writing this incident.

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And the problem is he confirmed its historical accuracy in a documentary that Dalia Capella made about his life just a couple of weeks before he died.

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This incident did indeed take place. He was the one riding next to the military governor, and he did nothing to stop the expulsion.

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In the documentary, he says that to happen, these are his words.

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Why was Habib so paralysed? And his answer in the documentary is out of political responsibility.

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These are his words. He reasoned, and then he says, Bah, pose.

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But what is this consequential responsibility that Habib is referring to?

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What could motivate a Communist committed to human emancipation to do absolutely nothing to alleviate such stark individual human suffering?

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It's impossible to understand either the historical weight of this episode or Habib's

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guilt without briefly reviewing the history of the Communist Party in Palestine.

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For Habibie to recall this episode in the weeks before he died shows that it is tied up with his own sense of political legacy.

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He belonged to a Communist Party that has spent most of its time since the Palestinian rebellion of 1930 639,

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totally committed to the Arab national movement and fully in support of the rebellion.

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These are the words of Moussa Woodberry, the Communist Party historian,

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because it saw anti-imperialism as the core axis of Palestinian politics when it

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actively participated in a popular front coalition with Palestinian nationalists.

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And as a result of this, the emphasised class struggle and social revolution.

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Indeed, national contradictions between Jews and Arabs were so severe that they led

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to the sea splitting on national lines in 1943 for Habibie and his comrades.

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There was no way of reconciling and essentially colonial and ruling nationality, only national liberation struggles.

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Again, these are the words of one fellow, the Soviet appointed Communist Party secretary.

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Habib's tragedy then can be summed up as follows An anti-imperialist Arab communist ended up

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accepting and justifying the imperialist partition of a homeland he had earlier sought to liberate.

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He did so because he followed the Soviet Union, and that's very important as a reason.

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And he also accepted that the results of the Nakba meant national defeat.

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Indeed, all Arab Communist parties acting as Soviet foreign policy satellites were forced to accept the partition

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because it became indelibly tainted with outside interference and ideological complicity with Jewish statehood.

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Arab communism suffered for years to come as a result of this enforced decision

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suddenly until the Soviet replacement with Arab nationalism in the late fifties.

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So for Palestinians, partition was not only treacherous, but violated the right of self-government and the right of self-determination.

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That is why Habib was nearly killed in Ramallah for accepting it and had to flee to Lebanon as a result.

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So as if subservience to Soviet foreign policy objectives was not enough,

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the 1948 war intensified Communist Arab-Jewish antagonism within the party and had lasting effects.

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While our Communist mobilised to protect Palestinians from the engulfing catastrophe,

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prominent Jewish Communist leaders like McInnis actively supported the Hagana forces and helped

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them in procuring arms from the Communist bloc to bring the war essentially in their favour.

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Another prominent Jewish communist leader, Meir Wilner,

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signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence on behalf of the Communist Party as the expulsions,

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essentially, of Palestinians were taking place around him. What must Palestinian communists have felt and thought when,

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after the Nakba they were forced back under the organisational and the political hegemony of those who supported the state's violent objectives?

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During the Nakba, Habib's sense of guilt and responsibility can therefore only be understood in this

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context of national collapse and overpowering social political disintegration.

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The scars and the injuries of 4749 would mark Habib until the end of his life.

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This is, of course,

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not to deny the role that the Communist Party played in the 1950s and the 1960s in the struggle against Israel's military government.

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Communists were at the forefront of political challenge to the state and demanded full rights and equality for Palestinians in Israel.

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They also played a key role in exposing state crimes like, of course, the massacre of 49 Palestinian citizens in 1956.

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It is also not to argue, as nationalists now do, that Arab communists collaborated with Israel.

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To believe that is not only to misconstrue and to falsify their overall contribution to Palestinian society in Israel.

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It is also to ignore how active they were in fighting against Israel's regime of collaboration, the regime of surveillance, and the regime of control.

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Adapting to circumstances one cannot change is quite distinct from actively collaborating with an occupying regime.

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This is confirmed by Hillel Cohen's work and I'll refer to his book Good Arabs, Israeli Security Agencies and Israeli Arabs from 1940 to 1967.

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I'm just going to make one quote from the book in order to support what I'm arguing about the communists, the communists, he says.

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Organised mass demonstrations urged internal refugees to return to their villages without permits and conducted other protest activities.

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Some under the banner of Jewish are a partnership. The Israeli establishment thus viewed them as a clear and present plus present danger to the state.

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The Communists also attacked collaborators boisterously and constantly tried to shame them in publicly,

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publicly coining terms like government steals, not Hakimi, which quickly became very popular.

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Indeed, if in the confusing circumstances that followed 1948, he continues the 48 war.

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Many Arabs chose to collaborate. The Communists offered a nationalist alternative,

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although a complex one that recognised Jewish national aspirations and the right of Israel to exist within restricted borders.

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And the quote from Hillel Cohen. So there is no question that our communists did fortifying Palestinian resistance

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to Israel and did actively oppose its unjust and discriminatory state policies,

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including land expropriation. Israel barely tolerated the Communist Party, and Ben-Gurion wanted to ban it.

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It was always hounded. It was always spied on. It was always politically restricted.

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The optimist should be right. I think in this context of struggle and forced compromise, political strains that haunted Habib.

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But one particular fact that is key to understanding this episode reported before

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is that side is not communist adapting to the new reality of a colonial Israel.

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He is a straight up collaborator who comes from a family of collaborators.

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This is the way he's depicted in the novel.

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This is a very harsh judgement by Habib that it saves his own skin while people around him suffer banishment and exile.

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But the depiction is also deceptive, since it stars ordinary Palestinians who remain the brunt of collaboration.

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When the actual historical event was about Habib himself, ultimately the weight of an overbearing Nakba prevails,

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and 1948 produces a deep sense of human failure and Habib for witnessing it importantly, and also for being protected from it.

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He returns only to see more expelled.

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So I'll say two more things that are worth emphasising about the episode.

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Saeed resists what he witnesses by describing it in a certain way,

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in a very particular way as refugee mother and child leave and had eastwards that figure slowly.

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Town is a very beautiful image. They towered over the landscape around them.

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If expulsion eliminates physical presence, it also enhances its figurative and its symbolic dimensions.

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Shadows will continue to hover over an empty land until they can return.

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That is why refugee absence only grows in his consciousness, haunts and shadows his every move.

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This is Habib's way of minimising Katia.

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The courtyard expulsion, the substance of expulsion, the fact that families, villages, cities, communities were torn asunder by Israel.

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It also conveys the centrality of 1948 in Palestinian history.

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Will the refugees also haunt the Israeli military governor who asks if they will ever disappear?

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Will the excluded surface for him as well?

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There is no suggestion in the novel that the perpetrators of the Nakba feel any remorse or compassion for the victims.

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Why would a leader that becomes the question in a binational Communist Party whose

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daily life is filled with encounters and discussions and friendships with Israeli Jews,

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never depict an ordinary Israeli in the novel.

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In fact, none of Habib's Jewish figures in the novel are independents, as it were, their all including his Mizrahi handler repressive state agents.

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Why? Especially when Kanafani manages to humanise Miriam in his novel returning to Haifa and to draw out her suffering as a Holocaust survivor,

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and also to draw to her human motivations for staying, not her Zionist motivations and human motivations for staying.

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And also when Mahmoud Darwish writes love poetry to his Jewish lover, Rita.

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Why then does Habib stay silent on the score? It is hard to answer this question, I think with any certainty.

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Habib was a disciplined political being,

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and his onerous public life of representing an oppressed and suffering population mattered most to him so he couldn't afford their wishes liberties.

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He also had a particular way of thinking about his own imaginative work in relation to his political commitments, politics and literature,

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where he would famously reiterate in his journalism what he described as the two watermelons he carried,

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but the pain to burdens, but also to different and separate entities and activities.

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Literature was his freedom from political constraint.

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His personal truth. Literature doesn't lie, he tells Dalia.

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These are his words in the documentary.

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If his political world was suffused with Israelis, he wanted his literary world to speak to his knockabout pain and though his Nakba injury.

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Again as the initial quote, as a form of crime writing, as a way to revisit the scars and the wounds and to remember who inflicted them,

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to expect that everyday encounters with Israelis would rectify or would attenuate.

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This is to misconstrue the ongoing nature of the injustice of Palestinian exile and Palestinian dispossession.

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The response to this point about the specificity of the literary for Habib brings me to my third comment on the expulsion sequence I quoted earlier.

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So thirdly, 48 and Habib's description generates a literal response, and this is crucial for his novel here as well.

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The symbolic resists the real by asking whether the child in the encounter is Mahmoud Darwish Habib.

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It was a direct link between expulsion and poetry. If the act of expulsion silenced outside the character, it doesn't silence the child.

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A new generation will fight with words and resist Israel's crimes.

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The son can finally adopt this generation.

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48 Palestinians, 48 generation resistance poets, resistance writers, those who under conditions of cultural and political sieged siege.

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These are the kind of families that terms managed to forge an emancipatory culture,

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a humanist culture against oppression and against national negation.

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So the emphasis on literary voice and speech is key in the novel.

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I would I would go even further. If anything, this is Habib's literary legacy to live.

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The contradictions of Palestinian communism in Israel is to produce a distinctly haunted literary voice.

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It's a voice that holds up so far, authoring as a placeholder for the core values of self-determination and South emancipation in the

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spirit of some cosmic form that Habib quotes at the beginning of the novel urging Palestinians,

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I'm not going to quote the whole poem to not to wait.

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And in the words of the poem, unto yourself, compose. He does, you should to yourself compose those letters you anticipate.

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But Habib buys such literary, imaginative freedom at a cost.

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And this is what I want to emphasise in what follows. Having outlined why I think 1948 is key to understanding the possibilities,

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I want to focus now on why Habib opts to live side on a stake at the end of the novel.

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Why is fantasy and writing the only option left at the end?

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As the magic creature tells Saeed, this is the creature from outer space that Saeed appeals to all the time.

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The creature tells him, This is the way you always are when you have no luck, when you can no longer endure your misery.

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He tells him You cannot. Yet you cannot bear to pay the high price you know is needed to change it.

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You come to me for help, but I see what other people do and the price they pay,

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allowing no one to squeeze them into one of these tunnels, he tells him.

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And then I become furious with you. What is it you lack?

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Is any one of you lacking a life he can offer or lacking a death to make him fear for his life?

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End of quote. So to leave Saeed on a stake, Habib has to reject other options and other political possibilities.

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So what does Habib sidelined in order to end up with literary fantasy and to end up with imagination as the main effect?

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There are two core rejections, and I'll just go through them quickly that are key.

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As I alluded to earlier, he rejects any form of political organisation, for example,

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that the Communists were undertaking at the time as he's sitting on a stake.

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So he looks down to see a boy selling little hard newspaper on one bazaar where the communists find the energy to fight side count.

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Such self-sacrifice doesn't appeal to one side also rejects.

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And this is another important rejection, another form of sacrifice, the option of armed resistance.

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That was politically all the rage when Habib wrote the novel.

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So in another key episode in the novel, there's a clash of ideologies between the passivity,

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the silence, the fight emblem, witnesses, and the armed response.

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And that's rehearsed inside encounter with his son Wala, which means loyalty in Arabic wallah as his son from his Second Life Mafia,

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the one who remained after his first wife in the novel yard was violently expelled.

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So the dialogue I'm referring to is essentially is fundamentally about the distinct life form of 48 Palestinians,

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those who, in a sense, by historical fluke, remained in what became Israel.

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I'm just going to outline the main part here,

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just to give you a sense of what options that that Habib has to reject in order to keep side on the stake at the end.

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So shocked by his parents, silent and silence inducing life Walla rebels in the novel as he's surrounded by police under Entourage,

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which was of course very important as a depopulated.

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Destroyed village in 1948, but also as a site of massacre.

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Habibie sets the scene there. Well, has an exchange with his mother.

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Bucky outside had brought Makhaya to the beach so she so he can convince Vala to surrender.

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Her decision instead to join Willa and his fellow Vanguard revolutionaries is beautifully and sadly evoked by Habib.

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So rather than helping come out of the caves, she actively joins him and they disappear.

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Join the armed struggle with others. So by the end, again, Saeed is left behind.

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He's alone. Both his wife and his son leave him to join the Palestinian Resistance Movement.

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This is the exchange, he tells his mother. These are Doric quotes, he says.

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I'm not hiding, mother. I've taken up arms only because I got sick and tired of your hiding.

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Suffocated, he says. It was to liberate. It was to breathe free.

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That I came to the cellar to breathe and freedom.

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Just once in my cradle he tells us. You stifled me.

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You stifled my crying as I grew and tried to learn how to talk.

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From what you said, I heard only whispers as I went to school.

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You want me? Careful what you say. When I told you my teacher was my friend, you whispered.

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He may be spying on you. One morning you told me. Mother, you talk in your sleep.

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Careful what you sings in your sleep. His mother cried out a way out how death is no way out.

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She was merely an end. There is no shame in how we live, she says.

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If we are secretive, it's only in hope of deliverance. If we're careful, it's only to protect all of you.

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Where's the shame in you coming out to us. To your father and mother.

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Alone. You have power over nothing. This is the end of this episode.

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So if the time for collective regeneration hasn't come yet, then wala as Vanguard, the armed struggle will always have its advocates.

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Habibie is not tempted by it though, and this is important novel, however attractive its lure was from the mid 1960s onwards.

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Unlike the problems of Iraq, despite the writer from Bethlehem originally, his FIDA heroes are celebrated in his novels.

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That kind of self-sacrifice never appealed to Habibie.

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It's also it also, incidentally, didn't appeal to Sahar Khalifa, who critiques the PLO in her novel.

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While fans and critics armed struggle as a mechanism of overcoming the Palestinian Lukman occupation for the

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occupied armed struggle against the militarily vastly superior state seemed futile and self-destructive time.

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But the argues may yet bring collective change in the meantime.

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She does have some. Until where? Until they are ready. These are her words.

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Habibie live side open to accusations of submission and subservience and also accusations of silence.

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What that tells his mother at the end of this episode, then why doesn't he speak?

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Her mother replies, He's not very good with the words Habibie strategy.

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And the problem is, is to be good with words. It is to show that if political reality is marked by defeat, by compromise, by subservience,

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by complicit history, etc., then literary words can provide the necessary margin of freedom.

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It is clear from the novel that such a cultural strategy has the benefits of ruminating on injury,

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exposing injustice, and telling the truth about history.

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That is why the novel ends with a rumination on the importance of truth.

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This is the last chapter on history historical consciousness.

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The novel also shows that not only political resistance, but even collaboration is not an option for side.

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There's a very funny scene in the novel. One side raises.

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After 1967, we hear on the radio that all [INAUDIBLE] should raise the white flag.

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And of course, the radio is referring to the Palestinians occupied the 1967 areas in the West Bank and Gaza.

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But while sitting in Haifa, he sees himself as part of this community,

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and he also raises the white flag, and they arrest him for implying that this is occupied land.

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You know, that this is this is act of submission becomes, in a sense, in the novel, an act of resistance.

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So, again, collaboration, even if you're a very good collaborator, is not an option in the novel, right.

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The strategy that Habib ends up advocating does have serious limitations.

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It advocates a literary resolution to real world problems of history.

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It also, ironically, praises, as it does, that the Oriental imagination, he says,

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as a mechanism of survival and coping under Israel's arrogant and colonial domination.

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Imagination and invention are the only values left standing at the end, unsullied by reality.

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Considering the brutality of Palestinian existence under Israel. There's something deeply unsatisfactory about this.

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Invoking the imagination is, of course, heartwarming literary stuff.

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It warms the hearts of all literature people. You say imagination will solve everything.

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It is the ultimate hope. And there are moments when I'm much more generous than what's coming next about Habibie.

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When I read this cultural gesture more positively as an opening to the future, as an anticipation of political self-determination, etc.

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But what is troubling is Habibie is active preclusion and reduction of other existing options.

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People can't live by culture alone, especially not oppressed peoples.

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Hope is about formulating political projects and strategies for emancipation.

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However magnificent Habibie imaginings are,

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the reality of Palestinian existence means that his literary escape cannot just be read as a form of freedom.

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It has to be evaluated and it has to be critiqued.

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If Habibie Stalinist politics were not the answer to the Nakba, should that preclude other forms of politics from informing mass sentiment?

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Maybe Habib himself is here, refusing to draw political lessons from his own aesthetic practice and to say that self writing means democratic self

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making and that Palestinians need a more self-organized form of politics than the CPA at the time could provide.

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Whatever the answer.

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The problem is clear Palestinian social and political life has been constitutively marked, if not irreparably devastated by the Nakba.

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It is this reality that Habibie articulates in the novel, like no one else in the annals of Palestinian fiction.

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Habib takes us back to the point of national destruction and forces us to reckon with the costs of defeats.

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He inserts himself into mass tragedy and reveals by doing so his own wounds and his own scars.

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A profound sense of loss and disjuncture emanates from this Palestinian national and individual fracture as Palestine is usurped,

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dispossessed, lost, ruled over and then lived in.

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Habib experiences his own reduction to an alien in his own homeland,

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a severed remnant left behind to witness the daily humiliations of a settler colonial responsibility that is governed by the exclusions,

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by the domination and by the violence of Jewish statehood.

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Habib's account is about experiencing how a dispossessing state actively rolls over you but doesn't belong to you.

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It belongs to and is claimed by someone else elsewhere.

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What remains is the impossibility of Palestinian existence under such harsh conditions,

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with an increasingly dire political situations situation and no prospects for betterment in the near future.

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Maybe Habib's metaphoric steak brings more to today than it did in 1974.

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I prefer to read it as a warning rather than as a reality.

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Everyday Palestinians show that sitting on a stake is not an option, that they will continue to fight for justice and for freedom.

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If 70 years to the Nakba has taught us anything, it is that Palestinians will never give up until they achieve justice and independence.

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Habib's stake is a fantasy. In a sense, they cannot afford neither in reality could he.

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So I would like to end with some thoughts on whether there are implications for Israel studies from working on Habib.

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Habib is usually read in the Palestinian register and the implications of his work for Israel are not the main focus of concern.

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So it might be worth asking. Then at the end, the following question What does Habib offer the academic study of Israel?

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I think the simple answer is the Nakba. There's no way of understanding Israel without understanding what Weitzman called it, standing over Haifa,

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that miraculous clearing of the land without tackling its foundational act of dispossessing the majority of Palestinians.

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What this act tells us about the nature of Israel itself, and also what it tells us about Israel's ongoing colonial practices.

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There's no way of understanding Israel without therefore appreciating as critical.

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Sociologists like Gershon, Saffir and Barak have argued the constitutive nature of colonisation and colonial conflict.

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For Israel as an entity, these following processes and practices, for example, are not only historical, but they are ongoing.

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Jewish conquest of land and labour. Historical. Ongoing.

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Pioneering and settlement. Historical and ongoing. Historical.

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Biblical writers justification the same and the construction of what political sociologist Avi so calls a permanent war society.

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That, too, is ongoing. Of course, colonialism is thus a crucial determinant of state formation and also of nation building,

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and continues to govern the allocation of power of rights and privileges in Israel Palestine to this day.

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From such a perspective, the Nakba is an ongoing event.

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The 1967 occupation does not only have a more violent prequel in this regard,

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but should be read as part of an ongoing process of colonisation that began much earlier than that.

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It's also worth adding that none of these questions have necessarily to do with politics.

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One can't, for example, study the Nakba like many more as did, and conclude that we need more expulsion today.

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Knowledge is clearly not a safeguard against dehumanising practices, but I believe that Morris is politically in the extreme minority and that,

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given a chance, ordinary Israelis would respond differently to to learning about the history of the Nakba.

348
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It's a wager I'm happy to take, actually. Why else would Israel spend so much time repressing and denying the Nakba,

349
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sealing off most of the archives about 1948, disappearing the Palestinians from history?

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If it didn't think that knowledge and public debate would change people's attitudes and perceptions.

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Reckoning with the Nakba is reckoning with both historical truth and also present day reality.

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Without it, Israelis who live on such a large dose of historical denial can never achieve self understanding, and they can also never be free.

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They would remain shackled to fears, anxieties and the moral distortions of oppressing others,

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and they would never be able to reconcile with their enemies. Reconciliation goes through the Nakba.

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That's what Habib has to offer. Thank you. Thank you so much.

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Making it okay if we keep on recording. Anyone has an objection.

357
00:36:42,370 --> 00:36:45,810
Okay, so let's open. Well.

358
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So I guess the question, I guess, which is more about the background to the publication of the book, I mean,

359
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obviously I read it when I was in graduate school, but if it came out in 1974, was you writing it between 67 and 73?

360
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Yeah. Wrote it immediately after the 73 war. When when was he writing it and sort of what was the journey to publication?

361
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Because he's obviously writing about one episode, but living through a very different.

362
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Yes.

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So that's what's intriguing about having Habib was that was writing fiction short stories in the forties before the Nakba and then after the Nakba,

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there's total silence. So he begins writing again.

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Fiction, not journalism, not political writings, in a sense, fiction immediately.

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Just before and immediately after 1967, he published his his first collection of short stories,

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the AM Super Sextet of the Six Days Immediately as a result of 1967.

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So what 1967 does for him as a writer and also goes for many Palestinians, is it opens up the floodgates of 1948.

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So he remembers the events of 1948.

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And he also begins to write about them effectively and begins to connect with 1948 and

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begins to connect with the West Bank and Gaza and with Palestinians in the West Bank.

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And Gaza is a very nice script. But he says the Palestinians and US occupied Palestinians enough are now united under one present of right.

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So that there's something about that moment which you can also see in Kanafani, for example,

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Kanafani writes in his novel Returning to Haifa and remembers 1948, which opens like a floodgate into his writing immediately after 1967.

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So there is that national moment that Habib comes to epitomise in The Optimist,

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and he begins writing the novel and is published in Little Southern in Parts, and then it's published as one volume in 1974.

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So the Optimist Sextet of the sixties are of that moment, of that very crucial,

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I would say, conjuncture in Palestinian politics after 1967 and before.

379
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You know, you can there are various ways of describing this politically before the political closure of the Arab revolution,

380
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the Palestinian revolution,

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beginning in the seventies and black September, but also ultimately after the October war, when you have a completely different political moment.

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So that's the most fertile cultural and political moment for Palestinians, in a sense, from 67.

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The irony of it is it's an outcome of occupation that becomes the irony of it all.

384
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But that's when he returns to 40. It's also interesting as sort of a fully formed and it was already completed entirely by 1973 or so.

385
00:39:38,190 --> 00:39:41,430
Yes. The sort of influence of that moment.

386
00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:45,060
So it's really sort of a 67 to 73. Yes.

387
00:39:45,930 --> 00:39:58,379
Yes. So it it it has those memories of 48 ruminating on 48 that everything essentially, I think Habib in his world,

388
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in his own imagining if it's possible to make that claim, I think writing for Habib is 48.

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There's nothing else which is more important than for him then 48.

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He is totally haunted by ghosts, by spectres, by feelings that are connected to fun.

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00:40:12,180 --> 00:40:17,100
He uses fiction writing unlike political writing, what he would argue with his enemies.

392
00:40:17,100 --> 00:40:20,489
And you know, he's a very sharp pen. He's also a journalistic hack.

393
00:40:20,490 --> 00:40:24,090
You know, there's no you don't want to [INAUDIBLE] with having you politically write.

394
00:40:24,270 --> 00:40:26,490
And so, you know, politically, it could be vicious.

395
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:37,400
But in his literature, he kept it open for that space because so much pain, so many scars, so much sense of individual complicity, silence, etc.

396
00:40:37,410 --> 00:40:40,590
So he does something else in the literary side of things.

397
00:40:40,590 --> 00:40:49,160
I think where, where what I'm trying to lay out seems to suggest that he maybe was something less of a literary talent.

398
00:40:49,170 --> 00:40:55,709
But so the notion of not at all unable to sort of rid himself of some of his

399
00:40:55,710 --> 00:40:58,800
political shackles was just this is a constraint that we should acknowledge.

400
00:40:59,910 --> 00:41:02,940
And, you know, let that be. It's not a constraint.

401
00:41:03,180 --> 00:41:08,159
It's totally not a constraint. It's the way he conceived of those activities.

402
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:16,320
I think, Habib, as as a literary figure, I think you can write them very highly amongst the Palestinians.

403
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:20,880
So I don't want to start comparing and especially because the was recording.

404
00:41:22,470 --> 00:41:28,290
But you know, there's something about the problems and the contradictions that Habib embodies,

405
00:41:28,290 --> 00:41:34,139
which gives you amazing literature where that's where he lives because he's so

406
00:41:34,140 --> 00:41:38,969
tortured and troubled and conflicted by the kind of literature he produces,

407
00:41:38,970 --> 00:41:46,830
I think is incredibly unlikely. And it's not only important in a small context for Palestinians in Israel.

408
00:41:47,190 --> 00:41:50,460
Or for the Palestinians in the West Bank or for Syrians in general.

409
00:41:50,470 --> 00:41:54,630
It's also important for the Arab world. Habib is a significant presence in the Arab world.

410
00:41:54,640 --> 00:42:00,030
I think on some level the optimist as a literary text is unrivalled.

411
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:05,670
So I wouldn't I think those divisions have been, you know, have some they have served him very well.

412
00:42:05,820 --> 00:42:11,610
Knew how to function with the constraints of of of of very repressive politics,

413
00:42:12,030 --> 00:42:18,870
an extreme allegiance to Soviet policy for the longest time, which enforced the partition on him as a political position.

414
00:42:19,230 --> 00:42:26,940
And at the same time, to give himself a space to breathe where you get all those things that that you couldn't simply tuck them in under his politics.

415
00:42:26,940 --> 00:42:30,750
And that's what makes him such an interesting and at some level contradictory figure.

416
00:42:35,080 --> 00:42:38,990
So I have, I guess, a comment, maybe two questions.

417
00:42:39,010 --> 00:42:46,059
The comment is regarding I find your last reference to why what is the relevance for

418
00:42:46,060 --> 00:42:49,540
this is with a somewhat perplexing because ever thought it's not relevant to Israeli

419
00:42:49,980 --> 00:42:54,820
in the study of Israel must include everything that falls under Israeli society is

420
00:42:54,820 --> 00:42:59,740
very close to Israeli state and also this is all part of even sure division of fight.

421
00:43:01,660 --> 00:43:06,100
But this is just another way of, you know, curious perspective difference for us because,

422
00:43:06,580 --> 00:43:14,379
um, so I have one question regarding Habib and one question regarding your position.

423
00:43:14,380 --> 00:43:19,600
In a sense, when it comes to your critique of Habib,

424
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:29,079
would you be willing to accept that at least an input in merit of his work is that by writing fiction,

425
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:33,270
he has helped to keep the memory of 48 alive, as you describe.

426
00:43:33,290 --> 00:43:43,719
I mean, there's an ongoing campaign to either repress or silence it, and he found a very successful way of keeping it alive.

427
00:43:43,720 --> 00:43:49,540
So in this I mean, would you give him credit for this? Although, you know, he does it in that very peculiar way that he does.

428
00:43:50,350 --> 00:44:05,380
Um, and regarding Habib himself, did he offer an alternative to Syrian nationalism as a viable program for political identification among the 48%?

429
00:44:08,440 --> 00:44:09,969
So I'm glad you say that about Israel.

430
00:44:09,970 --> 00:44:19,320
So this is very good news for me that Israel studies is deeply preoccupied with questions of of foundational expulsion and the creation of is that,

431
00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:24,040
you know, my encounters have been less the less optimistic than that.

432
00:44:24,040 --> 00:44:26,620
But, you know, I'll I'll take your word for it. Yeah, I'm delighted about that.

433
00:44:28,750 --> 00:44:33,880
So the question about let me begin with the last question about whether he constituted an alternative.

434
00:44:34,570 --> 00:44:40,180
I think I think Habib's is on is a Palestinian nationalist.

435
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:46,390
His nationalism is mediated through the peculiarities of his Stalinism.

436
00:44:47,260 --> 00:44:55,089
But I think what which forced him to take positions which he you could argue, willingly took or, you know, he was just he was a party apparatchik.

437
00:44:55,090 --> 00:44:56,140
He was forced to take those ideas.

438
00:44:56,290 --> 00:45:04,150
You couldn't not take those positions if you wanted to stay in the Communist Party of recognising Israel as recognising the partition,

439
00:45:05,260 --> 00:45:15,790
operating within those parameters, advocating for certain positions which jar with with other forms of Palestinian nationalism, you know.

440
00:45:15,790 --> 00:45:26,680
So it had this problem. I don't think it constitutes an alternative. I think he was just on some level a Palestinian state.

441
00:45:29,260 --> 00:45:37,720
So you can you could discuss somebody who arguably had political illusions about possibilities of peace,

442
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:46,660
who welcomed Oslo because he felt Oslo was the moment that Israel recognised the Palestinians and you could build on that and move forward.

443
00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:52,540
That is proved to be a total failure. Even critics saw that at the beginning of Oslo.

444
00:45:52,540 --> 00:45:53,619
So, you know,

445
00:45:53,620 --> 00:46:03,430
it was it was necessary for him to believe that that Israel wanted was interested in creating a state in the West Bank and Gaza in reality,

446
00:46:03,790 --> 00:46:08,559
because this is this justifies his ideology and justifies his own position that, you know,

447
00:46:08,560 --> 00:46:11,680
you have a state for Israelis and then you have a state for for the Palestinians.

448
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:15,639
And this was the logic of partition. So it justified his own position to justify this.

449
00:46:15,640 --> 00:46:24,310
All stars don't think in that sense. You know, he's presents an alternative, I think, on some level politically amongst Palestinians in Israel.

450
00:46:24,310 --> 00:46:29,680
That was, if you want to put it in those terms, I was Palestinian mainstream, but we have one state now.

451
00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:38,740
The job of people who are actively political or political formations within 48 Palestinians is now to make sure that you pressure Israel.

452
00:46:38,950 --> 00:46:42,639
You advocate for the creation of the other state because you already have that one state.

453
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:47,020
You also, of course, advocated the right of return, etc.

454
00:46:47,020 --> 00:46:54,459
But, you know, essentially that became his position. So I don't think he presents that kind of an alternative.

455
00:46:54,460 --> 00:47:00,490
In fact, there are many troubling things about his personal histories, political history that come out of, you know,

456
00:47:00,490 --> 00:47:06,970
essentially what when you think about the Communist Party, you have to you have to put it in a historical context.

457
00:47:07,150 --> 00:47:15,639
Those were a very small group of people. Most of the ones who didn't want partition split off ended up being isolated.

458
00:47:15,640 --> 00:47:20,379
The ones who accepted partition and carried it through a small group of people,

459
00:47:20,380 --> 00:47:27,970
a small couple of people essentially that were given this whole weight of trying to tackle the Palestinian-Israeli question.

460
00:47:28,150 --> 00:47:31,150
So I don't think their shoulders bear that much weight.

461
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:33,000
So I don't think you know, I don't think that.

462
00:47:33,010 --> 00:47:38,200
The problem of either the two state solution or Israeli policies lies with anything that has to do with the commons.

463
00:47:38,350 --> 00:47:41,470
I think the commons is essentially mostly a sideshow, right?

464
00:47:41,710 --> 00:47:45,310
If you're into it's a kind of an anthropological exercise that's only interesting

465
00:47:45,310 --> 00:47:49,030
for those who are interested in the politics of for the Palestinians.

466
00:47:49,030 --> 00:47:54,370
Not more not more than so. I don't think you can put a lot of weight on their position as such.

467
00:47:54,550 --> 00:47:58,150
Your second question, I forgot the man Megan did.

468
00:47:58,750 --> 00:48:02,680
Do you see the book is offering a way of talking about. Yeah, totally.

469
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:10,780
I think I. So what I want to argue about the optimist is that it is essentially a knuckleball that

470
00:48:10,780 --> 00:48:14,870
you cannot understand the novel without understanding how deeply marked by the numbers,

471
00:48:15,220 --> 00:48:20,770
not only the way the novel is written, not only the structure of the novel, but the events of the novel,

472
00:48:21,220 --> 00:48:26,950
the relationship between historical, the historical real and the introduction of otherworldly creatures.

473
00:48:27,220 --> 00:48:31,930
Y otherworldly creatures come because of the pressures of the real.

474
00:48:32,140 --> 00:48:35,230
They become intolerable. He has to find salvation from outside.

475
00:48:35,500 --> 00:48:43,090
All those things are essentially about them. And my question is, would you consider this to be a political act of total writing against it?

476
00:48:43,100 --> 00:48:45,100
Yeah, totally. Yeah, of course.

477
00:48:45,520 --> 00:48:53,200
But, you know, I don't think Habibie was thinking I'm going to write a novel which ultimately Israeli society will read,

478
00:48:53,200 --> 00:48:58,629
nor Habibie was thinking that I cannot because he was.

479
00:48:58,630 --> 00:49:04,660
So what's the word? Constricted by his political affiliations.

480
00:49:05,020 --> 00:49:11,470
Right. Which meant that you couldn't dwell on the Nakba so much because what you needed to do was to create that other state.

481
00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:16,090
Right? Because this is what's going to resolve the conflict as a two state solution.

482
00:49:16,330 --> 00:49:21,500
So there was an element in which politically you couldn't dwell so much on the Nakba, right?

483
00:49:21,790 --> 00:49:23,740
And that that became a release for him.

484
00:49:23,770 --> 00:49:34,059
So the notion that, you know, he made the comment once that and I think it's correct that, you know, commerce shouldn't be happy with the optimist.

485
00:49:34,060 --> 00:49:39,850
I think there's something there because he's not writing as a communist. But this is not a party line.

486
00:49:40,090 --> 00:49:44,680
That's what what what makes the novel so interesting that it's not a party line?

487
00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:53,229
You can accuse some other Palestinian writers of toeing party lines, and some of them are unmemorable, whether they advocate different positions.

488
00:49:53,230 --> 00:49:56,680
They just write literature in order to advocate those positions, etc.

489
00:49:56,950 --> 00:50:02,769
But Habib is not one of those figures, and that's what's what makes him so interesting that he used literature for,

490
00:50:02,770 --> 00:50:04,770
in a sense, for what it should be used for writing,

491
00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:10,750
where you have a margin to imagine something which is politically impossible to imagine and to live there,

492
00:50:11,290 --> 00:50:15,310
including speaking about your injury, which was very difficult for him.

493
00:50:16,660 --> 00:50:21,670
But thank you very much for your talk. I found it profoundly interesting.

494
00:50:22,300 --> 00:50:30,640
A quarter of a century ago I was doing an hour because here at Oxford and one of our texts was the optimist.

495
00:50:31,060 --> 00:50:38,200
So I know the first 20 or 30 pages of the book in Arabic quite well.

496
00:50:38,240 --> 00:50:43,510
I did then, but I only approached it as a literary text.

497
00:50:44,110 --> 00:50:57,040
And you placed Amir Habib in his literary as well as political and broader historical context, which I found very illuminating.

498
00:50:57,670 --> 00:51:01,659
And you emphasis was on 1948.

499
00:51:01,660 --> 00:51:07,930
The Nakba is the formative experience which coloured everything else that he wrote.

500
00:51:08,500 --> 00:51:18,940
But I remember not very distinctly one line of the dialogue in the book when the old man says to a younger man about the Israelis,

501
00:51:19,240 --> 00:51:27,010
My son, the Israelis are occupiers, but this is the nature of occupiers.

502
00:51:27,790 --> 00:51:35,850
They are no worse than the British were before them and I are with the Ottomans were before them.

503
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:42,280
This is a rather philosophical and charitable attitude towards the Israeli occupation,

504
00:51:42,490 --> 00:51:48,069
which doesn't sit in very easily with the experience of the Nakba and the episode

505
00:51:48,070 --> 00:51:54,520
with which you quoted of the wheel violence and inhumanity of the Israeli occupiers.

506
00:51:56,020 --> 00:52:05,470
So I don't recall that sentence. I have to look it up specifically to be able to address your question more more directly.

507
00:52:06,580 --> 00:52:11,520
I think there are several. He's fascinated when it comes to energy.

508
00:52:12,340 --> 00:52:15,760
He's fascinated by how much memory they remember.

509
00:52:15,760 --> 00:52:22,770
It's 2000 years that, you know, the diaspora. This is narrative story about the diaspora leaving for 2000.

510
00:52:22,790 --> 00:52:30,190
They have that long memory, you know, how can he is interested in this notion of memory when you need to remember how and this notion that,

511
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:33,400
you know, if they have the license to remember. Ten years ago.

512
00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:36,550
Why doesn't he have a license to remember just 20 years ago?

513
00:52:36,850 --> 00:52:42,520
What is it that makes his position deniable and they're completely not really interested in?

514
00:52:42,910 --> 00:52:46,030
He's troubled by those questions because he knows, as it were,

515
00:52:46,540 --> 00:52:51,970
he because he's surrounded by the culture, which is ultimately critiquing, because he knows it so well.

516
00:52:52,660 --> 00:53:01,510
He posits it sometimes within the frame of that culture. So I think that's one way of thinking about thinking about this this question.

517
00:53:05,280 --> 00:53:18,030
What strikes me most about the novel is, is the fact that speaking to his social and historical and political experiences,

518
00:53:18,030 --> 00:53:23,250
the fact that it doesn't have Israeli characters that you can sympathise with,

519
00:53:24,480 --> 00:53:28,740
unlike if you take Kanafani, for example, as an example,

520
00:53:28,740 --> 00:53:38,819
who makes it his mission to understand the perspective of a Holocaust survivor who ends up occupying the house of a Palestinian in 1948?

521
00:53:38,820 --> 00:53:45,570
And not only that, but also, you know, in between quotes inheriting that his sons were left.

522
00:53:45,990 --> 00:53:53,190
So, you know, he's deeply interested in with those ordinary human everyday motivations and questions how maybe it's not there.

523
00:53:53,190 --> 00:54:01,500
And then you have to ask yourself, why is he not there when this is his historical experience of combining with others of of of speaking Hebrew,

524
00:54:01,770 --> 00:54:04,799
of being surrounded by Jewish comrades. But why more than the novel?

525
00:54:04,800 --> 00:54:10,650
I think the only way is to think about it as that space where the Nakba could be articulated.

526
00:54:10,650 --> 00:54:13,970
And if if Israelis are perpetuators of they're not.

527
00:54:13,980 --> 00:54:17,040
But then there's very little one can think of them outside of that,

528
00:54:17,220 --> 00:54:24,810
if if writing for them is dwelling in pain, I can give you the specific quote from.

529
00:54:25,380 --> 00:54:35,940
I would love that. Yes. Because I used it as the opening sentence in an article I wrote many, many years ago, the debate about 1948,

530
00:54:36,330 --> 00:54:42,740
in which I reviewed the main points of contention between the old historians and the right historian.

531
00:54:43,170 --> 00:54:45,989
And they start with this quote. So I can give you I'd love to see it.

532
00:54:45,990 --> 00:55:01,500
Yeah, but I want to move, if I may, to your conclusion about the implications of this text and of Emil Habib more generally for Israel studies.

533
00:55:02,070 --> 00:55:05,639
And you mentioned Benny Morris.

534
00:55:05,640 --> 00:55:08,910
Yes. Benny Morris.

535
00:55:13,370 --> 00:55:21,260
And his changed, his political views revealed to the extreme right.

536
00:55:22,250 --> 00:55:28,520
But he never went back on his historical research at all.

537
00:55:29,630 --> 00:55:32,510
So everything he's written is still valid.

538
00:55:32,900 --> 00:55:43,550
And the conclusion is that Israel was mainly overwhelmingly responsible for the Nakba and for creating the Palestinian refugee problem.

539
00:55:44,150 --> 00:55:52,430
But in the past, he used to be opposed to this historian and just present the evidence and not draw any conclusions.

540
00:55:53,030 --> 00:56:03,860
Whereas after he went to the extreme right, he started passing political judgements and saying David Ben-Gurion, who was the great expeller in 48,

541
00:56:05,420 --> 00:56:18,530
that he was a defeatist and that he made a terrible historical mistake in not expelling the whole office and allowing 150,000 Palestinians to stay.

542
00:56:19,030 --> 00:56:22,190
But that's completely of no interest at all.

543
00:56:22,220 --> 00:56:29,960
What is of value is Benny Morris's historical research rather than his political commentary.

544
00:56:30,570 --> 00:56:39,680
So the other comment I want to make is about Edward Saved,

545
00:56:40,250 --> 00:56:49,700
who took the initiative in the conference that we had here at the Middle East Centre on

546
00:56:51,260 --> 00:56:58,670
what he wanted the conference to be on that the moral and political consequences of 1948.

547
00:56:58,940 --> 00:57:02,840
I don't know whether you were here when these talks took place,

548
00:57:03,410 --> 00:57:15,620
but they resulted in a volume that Eugene Rogan and I edited on the The War for Palestine Rewriting the History of 1948.

549
00:57:15,890 --> 00:57:19,100
And we all new historians, revisionist historians.

550
00:57:19,970 --> 00:57:27,080
But at the end, there is an afterword by Edwards side which sums up his engagement with the Palestinian issue.

551
00:57:27,350 --> 00:57:36,530
It's a very, very neat, eloquent essay covering his whole trajectory in relation to this issue.

552
00:57:37,940 --> 00:57:53,570
And it may be there, but it may have been in other contexts that he commented on the value of new history on the Nakba,

553
00:57:54,740 --> 00:57:59,660
and particularly the work of the new historians. And he said it was useful at three levels.

554
00:57:59,960 --> 00:58:10,370
One is that it educated the Israeli public about their own history and about the Palestinian view of the common history.

555
00:58:10,850 --> 00:58:22,400
The other value is that in coming to encourage Palestinian historians to become more critical of their own leadership in 1948.

556
00:58:22,820 --> 00:58:24,320
And thirdly, he said that.

557
00:58:29,090 --> 00:58:41,299
On the second point, he also said that new history gave Palestinians a version of the past which was honest, which was genuine,

558
00:58:41,300 --> 00:58:48,830
and which was line in line with their own experience of what happened rather than the propaganda of the victors.

559
00:58:49,070 --> 00:58:57,440
And finally, that this kind of openness on both sides could be conducive to mutual understanding and reconciliation.

560
00:58:57,860 --> 00:59:03,290
So this is, I would say, the long time ago before Oslo, I think.

561
00:59:03,880 --> 00:59:14,660
And but it is about the importance of 1948, even both for Israel study and post Palestine study.

562
00:59:14,960 --> 00:59:18,110
I know. I know. The afterword he wrote for the book.

563
00:59:18,770 --> 00:59:20,719
So my point that what Morris is very specific,

564
00:59:20,720 --> 00:59:33,470
my point about Morris is not that he didn't change political colouring and that he that the historical writings that he did an unquestioned said,

565
00:59:33,470 --> 00:59:37,940
I wasn't making that argument I'm just saying that as an event, if you look at 48,

566
00:59:39,290 --> 00:59:44,330
you could draw conclusions politically, which he ultimately did that we needed more of it.

567
00:59:44,640 --> 00:59:49,969
So there's nothing about the event itself which prevents you from saying we needed more of this event.

568
00:59:49,970 --> 01:00:03,260
So. So, no, but my my wager was that subject to public debate, talking, publicly, engaging, learning the history of 1948.

569
01:00:03,680 --> 01:00:09,410
In a public context, my wager would be that ordinary people wouldn't respond like Benny Morris,

570
01:00:10,430 --> 01:00:16,459
and that because there was something very specific about his own form of response after the second intifada and his own way

571
01:00:16,460 --> 01:00:24,680
of conceiving of the problem of 1948 and imagining continued expulsion in order to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,

572
01:00:24,680 --> 01:00:28,020
etc. But so I'm not worried about.

573
01:00:28,370 --> 01:00:31,660
I'm not questioning at all the historical reasons and its value.

574
01:00:31,670 --> 01:00:37,960
I'm just saying that you could you could take it different ways politically, depending on your own political perspective.

575
01:00:37,970 --> 01:00:42,020
But my wager is that for the majority of people or for a significant number of people,

576
01:00:42,320 --> 01:00:45,979
if you allow public debate about this, their attitudes would change.

577
01:00:45,980 --> 01:00:55,010
If if I didn't think that, then Israel's position about denying the Nakba, not wanting to discuss it, silencing it totally would be irrational.

578
01:00:55,310 --> 01:01:05,810
Why would they do it if if they didn't think that by doing it, they are controlling attitudes around history, sympathies towards enemies, etc.

579
01:01:06,590 --> 01:01:12,710
That's what I meant about the question of occupation. I know I understand what you mean about Habib's quote.

580
01:01:13,160 --> 01:01:18,160
So Habib made this reference, but there's something also very distinctive.

581
01:01:18,170 --> 01:01:23,390
There's something very playful about, you know, occupiers and you know, my son, this is how they come and go.

582
01:01:23,600 --> 01:01:27,169
But there's something very distinct about the Israeli occupiers which make this narrative,

583
01:01:27,170 --> 01:01:32,480
which troubled this narrative that Israeli occupied came not just as occupiers of land, but also settlers.

584
01:01:32,810 --> 01:01:36,080
They transformed society. They expelled the majority of the population.

585
01:01:36,350 --> 01:01:41,960
They made the home at the cost of the people who were there, unlike some of the other occupiers before them.

586
01:01:42,170 --> 01:01:46,280
So there's a huge social sociopolitical transformation that took place,

587
01:01:46,610 --> 01:01:54,829
which makes this judgement slightly too playful for Habib in that sense, because the weight of it is the weight of history is much,

588
01:01:54,830 --> 01:02:01,400
much more burdensome than than this comment suggests that there's something distinct about my grandmother sometimes used to say this, you know,

589
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:06,049
or any grandmother, if you talk to them, those who remember the Ottoman times,

590
01:02:06,050 --> 01:02:09,920
they tell you the Ottomans were here, they left, the English were here, they left.

591
01:02:10,130 --> 01:02:14,960
The Israelis are here. One day they will leave and you tell them what. But to do something different, the motivation is right.

592
01:02:15,410 --> 01:02:18,979
There's something different about the nature of the society that they created. There's something they're not.

593
01:02:18,980 --> 01:02:23,480
They're here to stay. You'd be able to, as it were, settle with them, reckon with them.

594
01:02:23,480 --> 01:02:27,500
It's not like it's not like the other occupation I wish it were, you know,

595
01:02:27,500 --> 01:02:31,820
like the Ottoman soil, which wasn't mostly an occupation or like the British.

596
01:02:32,270 --> 01:02:35,680
Sorry. Well, thank you so much for we still I mean.

597
01:02:35,960 --> 01:02:42,830
Well, not to make it through too much. Listen to too much of a bender, but they seem to remember you asking these questions of bloody man.

598
01:02:43,160 --> 01:02:55,610
Yes, I remember. You really think that? But I want to ask you instead about the day and whether this research could actually be taken forward

599
01:02:55,610 --> 01:03:05,350
in a comparatively be just be five feet of French and Italian communist political leaders then said,

600
01:03:05,900 --> 01:03:09,170
hey, it's sort of like a literary space in which they open.

601
01:03:09,920 --> 01:03:19,520
I think this may be a worthy way of like bringing the research forward and they themselves defamed his wife in office in this space,

602
01:03:19,850 --> 01:03:27,800
from the indications, both in both of the party, he sometimes even wanted to self-police even his phase of.

603
01:03:28,190 --> 01:03:31,009
And they even if they were like, you used to go, yeah, I mean,

604
01:03:31,010 --> 01:03:36,110
the thing they need or if they want to get more of those like different grants and so forth,

605
01:03:36,110 --> 01:03:44,210
but they always made sure that this stayed as a sort of free space.

606
01:03:44,330 --> 01:03:51,320
Yeah. Describe. And I was wondering whether you knew if you intentionally did something that you could do to bring this,

607
01:03:51,710 --> 01:03:58,220
is that people who are doing it and the comparatively and I would put it the same question to the Jewish community.

608
01:03:58,220 --> 01:04:04,640
Yes. Not just, you know, not just the marquee members, but also, you know, Arab just is such a thin, you know, so so.

609
01:04:04,670 --> 01:04:10,129
Yes. So that that it's a way into, as it were,

610
01:04:10,130 --> 01:04:15,530
certain 20th century the problems that this problem of started as in political

611
01:04:15,530 --> 01:04:20,569
studies and problem of of the culture of the Communist Party's problem of,

612
01:04:20,570 --> 01:04:26,930
you know, so there's something around that which is very further and how people work can be extremely loyal politically to a certain

613
01:04:27,080 --> 01:04:35,899
ideology would would do other things in their own literary work so that you couldn't just say that these are socialist realist.

614
01:04:35,900 --> 01:04:40,440
You couldn't put them under those labels, which are constricting labels and don't define what are.

615
01:04:40,490 --> 01:04:45,140
So I think that's an incredibly further way of thinking about that problem, especially in Italy.

616
01:04:45,530 --> 01:04:56,839
And Greece, of course is another example. So absolutely that so that's and what and the intention of thinking about Habibie in a sense through

617
01:04:56,840 --> 01:05:03,980
that geopolitical context is to be able to say that there's only so much that this generation can wait,

618
01:05:04,190 --> 01:05:09,890
can, can bear as weight, that their policies were essentially derivative policies that were forced on them

619
01:05:10,010 --> 01:05:15,320
and that they had to uphold on some level that you should think about even today,

620
01:05:16,070 --> 01:05:22,670
the history of the Communist Party in Israel as a Stalinist formation loyal to the Soviet Union and Soviet foreign policy.

621
01:05:22,970 --> 01:05:27,740
So that gives you a very little margin for manoeuvre politically.

622
01:05:28,670 --> 01:05:29,899
So on some level you can say, okay,

623
01:05:29,900 --> 01:05:36,110
you can blame them for upholding those positions because ultimately they were agents that were advocating those of those policies.

624
01:05:36,290 --> 01:05:39,770
But in another level, you can say, you know, either you stay in the party or you leave.

625
01:05:39,890 --> 01:05:40,820
And this was his position.

626
01:05:41,210 --> 01:05:49,070
Now, at the end of his life, Habibie was very troubled by the notion that he understood political responsibility as other in complete repression.

627
01:05:49,130 --> 01:05:55,820
Right. So he was very troubled by by the consequences of of of very youthful.

628
01:05:56,030 --> 01:05:58,969
Right. He was 24 at the time. Youthful decisions.

629
01:05:58,970 --> 01:06:03,709
We have all done things at the age of 24 which really, you know, so you could see the burden of that.

630
01:06:03,710 --> 01:06:06,260
Right. But I think this and that's what I meant.

631
01:06:06,320 --> 01:06:13,160
And that's why I like your question, because I want that generation to be understood in that context of of the Cold War,

632
01:06:13,490 --> 01:06:20,570
because that's how they framed their own not only political and work contribution, but also their own sense of culture.

633
01:06:20,840 --> 01:06:27,800
So they would read. So if you look at how it was deeply in touch with events from the Third World, Soviet literature,

634
01:06:28,100 --> 01:06:34,510
developments by writings by Gorky, Chekhov, you know, they belong to that kind of milieu, all the Communists did.

635
01:06:34,820 --> 01:06:37,070
And that that gives you something very compelling.

636
01:06:37,880 --> 01:06:50,180
And that's on some level because of the nature of 20th century, like a universal issue, is the question of ignorance and denial connected to that?

637
01:06:50,180 --> 01:06:55,490
That can be the statement. I know nothing about Israel. And you mentioned Israeli studies.

638
01:06:55,790 --> 01:06:58,250
Yes. I said with this kind of level of education,

639
01:07:00,020 --> 01:07:10,489
are you suggesting that in the school curriculum there isn't Palestinian stories being told about 1948 in history couldn't be ignored in geography?

640
01:07:10,490 --> 01:07:18,620
It's difficult in the literature. It doesn't appear that the Israeli kids grew up with the story about the Palestinian story.

641
01:07:19,580 --> 01:07:25,580
It used to be optional. Yeah, but. But, but it's an option was taken, not picked up.

642
01:07:25,580 --> 01:07:31,190
So it's not part of its heart is ignorance and not denial and the opportunity to digest this.

643
01:07:31,580 --> 01:07:35,180
So the state denies this. So there's an official state line.

644
01:07:35,240 --> 01:07:40,040
You know, now the question of denial in Israel is a very complicated question.

645
01:07:40,040 --> 01:07:46,490
So one you can say about Israeli society that Israeli society doesn't do things politically because it simply doesn't know.

646
01:07:46,910 --> 01:07:52,220
Right. And that if Israeli society knew, let's say, give you more a more controlled example,

647
01:07:52,520 --> 01:08:00,200
if it knew what happens in the West Bank and Gaza, it would behave differently again, because it's a settler colony.

648
01:08:00,320 --> 01:08:04,399
Settler colonists are very anxious, very fearful.

649
01:08:04,400 --> 01:08:11,180
It's hard to make that argument in that in that sense. It's also hard because Israeli society serves in the West Bank and Gaza.

650
01:08:11,720 --> 01:08:18,170
The army is a conscription army. So they know there's no question of ignorance about is.

651
01:08:18,350 --> 01:08:24,170
It's hard to argue that the Israelis do not know the facts about what's happening around them.

652
01:08:24,620 --> 01:08:27,970
Do they know the fact? That's one question as well.

653
01:08:28,020 --> 01:08:32,850
Question of colonisation, occupation, what's happening in Gaza, etc.

654
01:08:33,750 --> 01:08:44,160
It's hard to argue that they don't know how it's manipulated ideologically, how its what, what narrative it's given by the media.

655
01:08:44,200 --> 01:08:47,640
That's another set of questions. We can think about.

656
01:08:48,120 --> 01:08:52,440
The more specific question is do they know about the Nakba?

657
01:08:54,960 --> 01:09:03,150
I think that's a hard claim to make. I think they especially this generation, older generations who participated in the Nakba,

658
01:09:03,150 --> 01:09:06,450
in the war, know, of course they know they don't speak openly.

659
01:09:06,690 --> 01:09:10,500
They don't want to speak. These things are silenced because they don't.

660
01:09:10,860 --> 01:09:16,530
Because the culture, the political culture may may have changed.

661
01:09:16,530 --> 01:09:20,730
They're worried about how the new generation will respond to it. They don't talk about those things.

662
01:09:20,940 --> 01:09:28,430
So there is I think there is a problem of of public knowledge about 1948 being openly discussed and debated.

663
01:09:28,440 --> 01:09:35,820
I think I think and I think ending that denial it is a denialism about this question is is key

664
01:09:36,180 --> 01:09:42,570
to beginning to understand the story about Israel which the Israeli public is always not told.

665
01:09:43,080 --> 01:09:46,440
The Israeli public conception about Israel is Israel is the small country,

666
01:09:46,710 --> 01:09:52,020
plucky little country that is barely surviving on the edge of the Middle East.

667
01:09:52,290 --> 01:09:54,600
And all the Arabs around them want to throw them into the sea.

668
01:09:54,810 --> 01:09:58,770
And that's why we need to be active in the social not never alive, because we need to continue.

669
01:09:58,920 --> 01:10:00,150
That's the story that told.

670
01:10:00,300 --> 01:10:08,400
So the fear paralysing in a sense the Israeli population into certain political positions is active all this all the time by the Israeli.

671
01:10:08,790 --> 01:10:18,779
So if you tell the story of 48 and you reckon with that history, Israelis would be able to see how they are,

672
01:10:18,780 --> 01:10:24,569
in fact belong in a history of perpetrators, that they are not the victims that they think they are.

673
01:10:24,570 --> 01:10:33,540
In fact, they were extremely powerful in 48 and they committed all those crimes, massacres, expulsions, etc.

674
01:10:33,750 --> 01:10:37,840
So there's no guarantees. And it depends on the public debate.

675
01:10:37,860 --> 01:10:42,240
It depends on the nature of political groups mobilising around this, etc.

676
01:10:42,420 --> 01:10:48,060
But to have it suddenly more publicly acknowledged and debated. I one it's an elementary democratic demand.

677
01:10:48,810 --> 01:10:54,420
And two, because I'm not afraid of democracy. They are I want to debate those events publicly with them.

678
01:10:54,690 --> 01:10:58,709
Now, they might win at the end of it. I doubt it. Right. But I want that open.

679
01:10:58,710 --> 01:11:04,170
Silencing it doesn't help anyone. Silencing it turns it into a completely different event.

680
01:11:05,280 --> 01:11:10,410
So there is an element of ignorance when it comes to 48, but there's also an element of state denial and indeed denial.

681
01:11:10,890 --> 01:11:18,330
So the moment that I'll be moulded and shaped, the new historians moment, the moment of, if you like,

682
01:11:19,110 --> 01:11:24,690
during the Oslo years when Israel publicly was more open about questions of 1948 is completely closed now,

683
01:11:25,020 --> 01:11:29,010
and it's closed because the state decided that it's politically.

684
01:11:29,250 --> 01:11:34,540
Maybe, Avi, you can tell us more about this. It's politically difficult to control right now.

685
01:11:34,570 --> 01:11:39,990
I would like to add. Yeah, please comment in answer to your question.

686
01:11:40,380 --> 01:11:49,440
I went to school in Israel and we did study 1948, but the term the Nakba was never mentioned.

687
01:11:49,890 --> 01:12:01,920
I only knew it as the War of Independence, and it was the Zionist narrative that you have just summarised about what happened in 1948.

688
01:12:03,630 --> 01:12:20,160
And as far as the refugee problem is concerned, what we were taught in school is that the Arabs attacked us and we managed to survive.

689
01:12:20,670 --> 01:12:25,740
It was a miracle and we didn't harm anyone.

690
01:12:26,580 --> 01:12:34,380
But the Arab leaders told the people to get out of the way, to make way for the invading Arab armies.

691
01:12:35,730 --> 01:12:45,990
So Israel is completely innocent of any misdeeds in 1948.

692
01:12:47,250 --> 01:12:55,920
But after Oslo, there was the of the era of openness in Israeli society, and there was the Rabin government.

693
01:12:55,920 --> 01:12:59,310
And we had a very liberal minister of education, Yossi Sarid,

694
01:12:59,700 --> 01:13:07,950
and he ordered the rewriting of history textbooks for secondary schools to incorporate

695
01:13:07,950 --> 01:13:14,850
some of the findings of the new research and especially the findings of Benny Morris.

696
01:13:16,350 --> 01:13:27,580
So the new research had some impact on the teaching of history about 1948, but it didn't amount to just.

697
01:13:27,830 --> 01:13:35,180
Just that in listening the old narrative, but it was more subtle, the textbook said.

698
01:13:35,450 --> 01:13:46,220
Imagine yourself is a boy or a girl in an Arab village in the middle of the war and having to flee because of the war.

699
01:13:46,490 --> 01:13:49,130
So it didn't allocate responsibility to Israel,

700
01:13:49,370 --> 01:13:58,490
but at least it opened up questions and made people think about what it would have been like to have been a Palestinian boy or girl.

701
01:13:59,720 --> 01:14:13,910
So that was a move towards greater openness, greater honesty and educating the public about what actually happened in that year.

702
01:14:14,450 --> 01:14:19,100
But then there was the second intifada. The Likud came back to power.

703
01:14:19,520 --> 01:14:28,550
There was a really early morning that was the education minister.

704
01:14:29,450 --> 01:14:36,860
She was a real hard line nationalist and she ordered the rewriting of the history books

705
01:14:37,160 --> 01:14:44,120
and she restored the old Zionist narrative about the refugee problem and everything else.

706
01:14:44,510 --> 01:14:51,920
And she also wrote an article in the Jerusalem Post in which she talked about the Oslo criminals.

707
01:14:52,130 --> 01:15:03,500
The Oslo criminals were Rabin, Peres, Yossi Beilin, the democratically elected Israeli government which signed a peace accord with the Palestinians.

708
01:15:03,710 --> 01:15:14,360
For her, they were criminals. So there's a new discourse around 48 of probably knows more more about this than I do.

709
01:15:14,360 --> 01:15:20,990
But I've been picking this up in the press. There's the new way of talking about 1948 is to say that the Palestinians are self victimising.

710
01:15:21,470 --> 01:15:22,430
They are. They are.

711
01:15:22,430 --> 01:15:30,200
They are committing they are committing their own Nakba by holding onto the right of return, by perpetuating their own misery, etc.

712
01:15:30,380 --> 01:15:35,180
So rather than so, you turn. So again, you blame the victims for something that you did to them.

713
01:15:35,360 --> 01:15:40,549
Right. So there's this discourse around self victimisation. So you should, you know, forget about the past.

714
01:15:40,550 --> 01:15:45,800
You should reconcile with the past. Enough of those things. You should disband the umbrella, right?

715
01:15:45,800 --> 01:15:52,340
That educates the refugees, etc., supports them, protects them, etc.

716
01:15:52,490 --> 01:15:56,120
You should just give up on the idea that you are refugees. There is no no way to return to.

717
01:15:56,360 --> 01:16:01,429
You don't have the political right to to get over it. And that new discourse is a discourse of blame.

718
01:16:01,430 --> 01:16:07,130
So the right of return is described not just not as a form of justice towards people that you committed crimes against,

719
01:16:07,340 --> 01:16:09,770
but the right of return is described as a war against Israel.

720
01:16:10,310 --> 01:16:17,299
The discourse around Gaza they are marching to to return to Israel and take over is completely,

721
01:16:17,300 --> 01:16:22,910
you know, terror inducing fear in its own population about what the Palestinians want to do.

722
01:16:23,060 --> 01:16:28,250
So again, that's the peculiarity of Israeli political culture, that it's seeped in that language.

723
01:16:28,760 --> 01:16:41,270
Let's come back to that comment you made that, as I understand it, the colonialism, if you're going to use that word, is unique to Israel.

724
01:16:41,510 --> 01:16:42,320
No. Yes.

725
01:16:42,680 --> 01:16:53,900
Because it's a different kind of colonialism that the has to study and the characteristic of colonies as they went through the through history,

726
01:16:54,260 --> 01:17:05,450
once the colonial power left, it left a society which was strong, but a political administration.

727
01:17:05,720 --> 01:17:17,420
It was very, very weak. And we've got, as I understand it, something happening, an evolutionary process going on, but that comes out in the novels.

728
01:17:17,420 --> 01:17:29,740
And so that you have a build up to 1948 and then you have how do we deal with this in terms of use of history?

729
01:17:29,750 --> 01:17:34,760
What really happened was nobody knows what really happened. We have a memory of what happens.

730
01:17:35,060 --> 01:17:44,240
And the memory is essential to my identity, my mind, my own personal memory of about my own life is who I am.

731
01:17:44,440 --> 01:17:50,190
Yes. But it's it's these kind of conflicts that they're resolving, perhaps.

732
01:17:50,210 --> 01:17:53,030
And we've got a few more generations to go.

733
01:17:53,300 --> 01:18:04,850
But there's something happening, and especially in literature and drama and poetry, but fantasy and imagination can deal with that,

734
01:18:04,850 --> 01:18:13,520
which is not what happened, not the reality, but the dream, the hope, the anticipation of what could be.

735
01:18:13,550 --> 01:18:24,410
Yes, yes, yes, yes. So that's all they're questioning in your question is the things that go around my head as I listen to the other.

736
01:18:26,360 --> 01:18:30,530
Maybe that. Maybe they. What do you think the potential for a Palestinian.

737
01:18:30,600 --> 01:18:35,310
Yeah. Is and something about the form of colonisation.

738
01:18:35,700 --> 01:18:40,850
So the form of colonisation. Okay. Israel doesn't have a mother country it came from.

739
01:18:41,580 --> 01:18:46,260
And this is always an argument that's used to say that, you know, then Israel is not a.

740
01:18:47,160 --> 01:18:50,670
Well, you know. Well, it's a new kind of cyclical. And here it is.

741
01:18:50,670 --> 01:18:54,120
It functions like a settler colony. And they're also immigrants.

742
01:18:54,120 --> 01:18:58,830
And they're also Holocaust survivors. And they're also settlers. So there's something very distinct about Israel.

743
01:18:59,250 --> 01:19:06,510
And to be able to understand the specificity of the Palestinian question is to be able to understand the distinct nature

744
01:19:06,510 --> 01:19:14,159
of of the founding members around the notion that Israel built itself around a victim state and the notion that,

745
01:19:14,160 --> 01:19:20,729
you know, Jews were persecuted, anti-Semitic persecution around the world for generations, for years to come before that.

746
01:19:20,730 --> 01:19:26,850
So that, you know, that is the specificity of the Palestinian that we're not dealing with whites and blacks in South Africa, which is much easier.

747
01:19:26,850 --> 01:19:31,889
But we are dealing with with a population with a state that claims and rightly so,

748
01:19:31,890 --> 01:19:39,210
with it with a population that was persecuted in Europe, suffered the Holocaust, etc., so that it's part of the problem.

749
01:19:39,220 --> 01:19:42,310
So at the same time, the practices of our colonial,

750
01:19:42,340 --> 01:19:48,930
at the same time one's human sympathies are with victims and Jews were victims in Europe of persecution,

751
01:19:49,030 --> 01:19:56,640
holocaust, etc. So it has its own unique, you know, overdetermined nature as, as a conflict.

752
01:19:58,170 --> 01:20:05,550
But the notion that you have a settler population that is there doesn't necessarily mean that you need the state, which is settler colonial state.

753
01:20:06,210 --> 01:20:10,170
The state can be configured differently to where it where it can be.

754
01:20:10,170 --> 01:20:17,190
For example, one elementary thing which would make Israel a democratic state, they wanted the state like England was a state,

755
01:20:17,190 --> 01:20:21,300
when in reality it's not like, you know, no, it's not like England is a state.

756
01:20:21,600 --> 01:20:25,200
England. Britain is a state for all citizens. Israel is not.

757
01:20:25,650 --> 01:20:32,730
Israel is a state for all Jews. Yeah. And there's something about that, making Israel consistent with elementary democratic norms,

758
01:20:33,030 --> 01:20:38,370
which would change that situation where you have the colonial privileges of anybody who's a Jew from around the world being able

759
01:20:38,370 --> 01:20:46,140
to claim citizens while Palestinian refugees who were who were dispossessed as a result of the creation of Israel cannot return.

760
01:20:46,410 --> 01:20:47,130
So there's something.

761
01:20:47,300 --> 01:20:55,290
So there are ways of dealing with the nature of that history and the legacy and making it more consistent with elementary political demands,

762
01:20:55,290 --> 01:21:01,649
which are necessary, I think, politically resonant. This has nothing to do with moving the settler population, putting it somewhere.

763
01:21:01,650 --> 01:21:04,230
I'm not talking about the West Bank and Gaza, I'm talking about Israel proper,

764
01:21:04,770 --> 01:21:10,819
etc. All these things can be configured with the two populations existing there in Israel.

765
01:21:10,820 --> 01:21:15,629
It doesn't. There's no mother country to leave back to. There is no Algeria option in Israel.

766
01:21:15,630 --> 01:21:21,150
Palestine. That is the only option that we, the Palestinians and the Israelis are there forever.

767
01:21:21,570 --> 01:21:27,660
And they need to find a way to figure out how to live with each other without one side or the other.

768
01:21:27,810 --> 01:21:34,440
Yeah. So the current oppression is the Israeli side, but also you want to guarantee in the future that in an area which is majority Arab,

769
01:21:34,480 --> 01:21:38,400
majority Muslim, you do not have a situation where minorities are persecuted.

770
01:21:38,400 --> 01:21:43,410
So I'm all for what the spirit of what you're describing. Does literature play play a role in preparing for that?

771
01:21:43,920 --> 01:21:51,329
You know, yes. But, you know, literature is also that the effects of literature are, you know, I don't want to dump on my literary colleagues here,

772
01:21:51,330 --> 01:21:58,110
you know, but the effects of literature are, you know, how literature can save the world, it cannot save the world.

773
01:21:58,110 --> 01:22:01,230
Ultimately, political organisation can save the world. And you need.

774
01:22:01,530 --> 01:22:07,560
You need organisations that struggle for values that are consistent with universal people to reflect.

775
01:22:07,570 --> 01:22:11,370
Yes. In a way other than the political state.

776
01:22:11,670 --> 01:22:17,160
Totally. Yeah. But I think there's something more interesting. So if you look at Israeli state level, it's it's a horrifying story.

777
01:22:17,340 --> 01:22:22,350
You look at Israel, what it does every day in Gaza, the killings, sniping, people are armless,

778
01:22:23,460 --> 01:22:29,370
defenceless, civilian population being picked off by highly trained soldiers.

779
01:22:29,460 --> 01:22:36,490
You know, it's on the state level. It's horrifying. But on on a more mass level, on a popular level, there are more questions.

780
01:22:36,510 --> 01:22:41,610
Israelis Israelis I talked to, they have questions about how long is this going to be sustained?

781
01:22:41,610 --> 01:22:46,439
For how long can we live like this? It's a it's a very intrusive state, Israeli state.

782
01:22:46,440 --> 01:22:49,620
Forget about Palestinian society. It's intrusive on Israeli society.

783
01:22:49,830 --> 01:22:53,160
The demands it makes of Israelis are very high for any state to make.

784
01:22:53,460 --> 01:23:00,780
It's constant giving time away, going going off to occupy, to kill you ask to kill all the time in the name of the state.

785
01:23:01,110 --> 01:23:05,790
So I think there is a sense of, you know, the Israeli state tries to work against them,

786
01:23:05,790 --> 01:23:09,120
but there's a sense of tiredness from the conflict, a genuine tiredness.

787
01:23:09,330 --> 01:23:12,660
And that opens questions. Yeah. Questions about.

788
01:23:12,930 --> 01:23:19,990
I bumped into somebody on an aeroplane going back home and he told me no, they on their own they only Musharaff.

789
01:23:20,250 --> 01:23:25,470
An older generation is in his early sixties and they started a study group.

790
01:23:26,460 --> 01:23:33,920
But he wanted to know. About the villages around him. So all these things, you can't you know, these things are all all happening in Israel, right?

791
01:23:34,190 --> 01:23:40,129
That you cannot that if you only look at the state level, you don't see. Hopefully they will amount to something politically.

792
01:23:40,130 --> 01:23:45,730
They haven't yet. But they're there. They're there and they exist. There's literature play a role in opening up spaces like that.

793
01:23:45,740 --> 01:23:51,860
Yes, of course it does. And you have these film people.

794
01:23:55,390 --> 01:24:02,260
Prizes, exhibitions of films that are made in conjunction Israelis and Palestinians.

795
01:24:02,680 --> 01:24:12,430
Yes, film festivals, festivals, film festivals. And then you have also victims of from both sides coming together families.

796
01:24:13,030 --> 01:24:18,849
That's a very significant development in the last under impossible circumstances where a Palestinian

797
01:24:18,850 --> 01:24:24,280
families whose members died as a result of Israeli action and Israeli families will remember.

798
01:24:24,550 --> 01:24:27,790
They come together. They speak about their joint pain.

799
01:24:27,790 --> 01:24:33,660
They speak about the suffering. They, regardless of political colouring that's on a more popular level.

800
01:24:33,670 --> 01:24:38,350
There are these things. But the situation is extremely difficult and much worse than it was before.

801
01:24:39,030 --> 01:24:42,820
You know, nobody can deny that. Absolutely. Yes. So I think we should close here.

802
01:24:42,840 --> 01:24:53,560
I must know that this fascinating discussion that you obviously think you which deals with the possibly some optimist title,

803
01:24:53,830 --> 01:24:55,059
ended up in what I would say,

804
01:24:55,060 --> 01:25:03,900
a democratically optimistic tone, which being the I guess the pessimist in this room I'm going to exercise, will have that to comment on.

805
01:25:04,450 --> 01:25:07,719
And I want to thank you again for coming. I want you all for being.

806
01:25:07,720 --> 01:25:12,790
And thank you. Thank you very much.