[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 144 (Tuesday, September 17, 2024)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E910-E911]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              REMARKS ON THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. JENNIFER A. KIGGANS

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 17, 2024

  Mrs. KIGGANS of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record 
remarks submitted at the request of a Virginia Beach constituent, Rabbi 
Dr. Israel Zoberman of Temple Lev Tikvah, and are a reflection of his 
views:

                  On The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

       Palestinian award-winning author and lawyer, Raja Shehadeh 
     is co-founder in 1979 of Al-Haq, the Palestinian human rights 
     organization. The Observer loaded him, ``Palestine's greatest 
     prose writer'' and the New York Times Book Review heaps 
     praises as well, ``in his moral clarity and bearing of the 
     heart is self-questioning and assistance on focusing on the 
     experience of the individual within the storms of nationalist 
     myth and hubris, Shehadeh recalls writers such as Ghassan 
     Kanafani and Primo Levi.''
       In his latest book with a challenging title, What Does 
     Israel Fear From Palestine? New York: Other Press. 2024, 
     Shehadeh, clearly a Palestinian patriot who was born in 1951 
     in the West Bank town of Ramallah, offers us a concise packed 
     yet imbalanced perspective on the long and agonizing 
     Palestinian-Israeli conflict that the October 7, 2023, 
     Hamas's vile attack with terrifying Holocaust dimensions, has 
     brought into sharp view with months of fighting and much 
     suffering to both sides. The detail-oriented writer and 
     activist is anchored in the Palestinian saga of loss and 
     grievances going back to the pivotal 1948 victorious Israeli 
     War of Independence which the Palestinians painfully regard 
     as their Nakba (Catastrophe).
       Touching are the author's reminiscences of growing up in 
     Ramallah with his grandma who was a refugee from Jaffa, ever 
     missing her old home and inculcating in her young grandson an 
     attachment to the family's past. ``For a long time, I was 
     hostage to the memories, perceptions and attitudes of others 
     that I could not abandon. My sense of place was not my own.'' 
     However, following the 1967 War when he was able to visit 
     Jaffa, his family's roots gained a realistic sense of 
     belonging. The close physical proximity was a primary factor.
       Shehadeh blames the British for the turn of events 
     culminating in the 1948 Arab defeat and the Palestinian 
     debacle, pointing at the 1917 Balfour Declaration as the root 
     cause, stating that the 1922 to 1948 British Mandate was 
     dedicated to fulfilling the earlier declared British 
     commitment toward the Jewish people. I believe that 
     historians would beg to differ, regarding a gradual British 
     shift in the Arabs' favor and manifested in severe limits on 
     Jewish refugees before and after WWII and the Holocaust. 
     Intense Jewish military pressure was created as the British 
     Empire was disintegrating. The author claims that ``what 
     happened in Palestine was the utter dissolution of a 
     nation,'' notwithstanding the acknowledged fact that no such 
     ``nation'' historically existed yet the Israeli Jewish 
     narrative supported by the Bible claims past millennial 
     Jewish life and creativity which is cavalierly dismissed by 
     the author, ``Israel treated the Bible as a historical 
     document and used it to back up the claim that the land had 
     belonged to the Jews from time immemorial, having been 
     promised to them by the Almighty.''
       He bemoans the fate of the Palestinian Arabs, about 
     160,000, who remained in Israel and were ``forced'' to 
     celebrate Israel Independence Day. Admittedly, they were 
     caught in a bind but there is no evidence that they were 
     coerced to celebrate Israel's national festivals. After all 
     they have enjoyed the benefits of becoming Israeli citizens 
     and significant progress of integration was accomplished 
     though challenges remain in a complex scenario with serious 
     security issues. There is evidence of growing Palestinization 
     of Arab Israelis while polls reflect no desire on their part 
     to trade their Israeli citizenship for an Arab one. There is 
     no mention by the author of the 750,000 Jewish refugees in 
     1948 from Arab lands who left under duress, subject to 
     pogroms and losing their belongings following centuries of 
     discrimination.
       It is hard for Shehadeh to come to grips with Israel's 
     success to establish a modern Jewish national identity, 
     defined by him as ``Zionist colonization,'' with the 
     revitalized Hebrew language bestowing Hebrew names on the 
     rebuilt landscape that had carried Arab ones. He points at, a 
     non-starter, proposal of his late father, Aziz Shehadeh, 
     following the 1967 War, to use the 1947 Partition 
     Resolution--then denied by the Arabs--for a Palestinian 
     state. Abba Eban, Israel's legendary foreign minister, 
     insightfully coined that the Palestinians ``never missed an 
     opportunity to miss an opportunity.'' Indeed, the 
     controversial Jewish State Law of July 19, 2018, caused 
     understandable consternation among Israeli Arabs, exacerbated 
     by the dropping of Arabic as an official language. Sadly, I 
     share with the author, only 3% of Israeli Jews are literate 
     in Arabic. That is part of an important discussion concerning 
     Israel's better integration into the surrounding Arab Middle 
     East while there are those Israelis who prefer a Western 
     orientation. I suggest that both approaches ought be pursued 
     tandem.
       The book's Part Two is dedicated to the Gaza War, 2023-4, 
     triggered by the October 7, 2023, Hamas's massacres which the 
     author thankfully condemns though seemingly impressed with 
     the military aspects of catching Israel by surprise as Egypt 
     did in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the breaking through the 
     failed billion plus costly barrier, along with the heavy 
     Israeli fatalities, casualties and captives. ``The brutality 
     of Hamas's attack and the civilian death toll certainly cast 
     a shadow on their military success.
       Whereas an occupied population has the right under the 
     international law to resist, they have no right to commit war 
     crimes. Still, this time the Palestinians did not fit into 
     the role of victims. To the Israelis it seemed like 
     aggressors who were challenging Israel's very existence.''
       The astute Shehadeh is surely aware that Gaza was returned 
     to the Palestinians in 2005 by then Prime Minister Sharon, 
     followed by Hamas's forceful occupation and the cruel 
     toppling of the Palestinian Authority there with no elections 
     since the 2006 Hamas's ``victory''. He regards the Israeli 
     response to the October 7 Nazi-like Hamas's massacres 
     excessive, expecting public Israeli criticism as back in 1982 
     with the horrific Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon. The 
     author though surely knows that the Christian Phalangists had 
     a decisive hand at that time. Somehow, there is no reference 
     also to Iran's leading role in directing its radical proxies, 
     Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and others, to prevent the near 
     peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia with the successful 
     foundation of the Abraham Accords. Also, the author's 
     comparison of Israel to the once South African apartheid 
     state is misleading.
       I wholeheartedly concur with Shehadeh's following 
     assessment, ``Young Israelis felt secure enough that they 
     planned a rave night on the border with Gaza. But when Hamas 
     broke through Israel's vulnerability and insecurity were 
     exposed. Israelis were traumatized because they realized they 
     couldn't go on with their life in the same way, making the 
     same assumptions about the reality of the state and its 
     security. Unless, that is, they defeated the aggressor.'' I 
     also share the author's own response to his book's title, 
     ``The very high human and material cost of the war in Gaza 
     proves that what Israel fears from Palestine is Palestine's 
     very existence.'' Surely a Hamas controlled Palestinian state 
     is not accepted by Israel for obvious reasons.
       I do appreciate Shehadeh's optimism concerning the future, 
     ``And yet, looking back at the history of the region it is 
     only after great upheavals that hopeful consequences

[[Page E911]]

     follow.'' However, the central question and challenge remain, 
     whether two separate and contradictory narratives can be 
     reconciled for the future sake of both peoples.
       Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman is the founder of Temple Lev 
     Tikvah in Virginia Beach. Kazakhstan's only born rabbi, he is 
     the son of Polish Holocaust Survivors and spent his early 
     childhood in transit and DP Camps in Austria and Germany. He 
     grew up Haifa, Israel.

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