Not in his name: Jewish Palestinian speaks out against 'apartheid state'

Catholic New Times, Oct 24, 2004 by Kevin Spurgaitis

Fitted in a dress shirt and suspenders--his front pocket brimming with scribbled cues--Dr. Uri Davis looks very much an academic. He sports a silver goatee and thinning hair, gregariously speaking with sparse, sardonic jibes. The Jewish scholar stands poised before a roused group of undergraduates, behind a podium draped in a Palestinian banner. Organized by the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, Davis' keynote address at Toronto's York University is no sober oration, though. His is a heartfelt plea.

"The flag of the state of Israel does not represent for me any signifier of pride or contentment. The flag of my country, the flag of Palestine, is the flag I'm happy to speak behind," he says with scorn.

"I identify my country as the country of Palestine. I identify the state in which I'm a citizen as the state of Israel, a member state of the United Nations organization. It has a flag under which I personally would not wish to speak. The flag is raised upon detention and torture centres, police stations and prisons, where political detainees are incarcerated."

Davis is a Jewish citizen of Israel, but staunchly identifies himself as a "Palestinian Jew." Born in an undivided Jerusalem in 1943--raised by his British and Czechoslovakian parents--he is an unlikely booster of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). For 30 years, the anthropologist and philosopher excavated Israel's democracy, trying to expose what he calls the "pervasive system of legal and social discrimination" against the Palestinian people. Davis is the founding member and chairperson of the Movement against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine (MAIAP) and an observer-member with the Palestinian National Council. An expert on Middle Eastern affairs and Islamic history, he is a fellow at the University of Durham and the University of Exeter in the U.K.

The human rights defender has written and edited 15 books and numerous articles on politics, legal systems and human rights in Israel and Palestine. In his first book, Israel An Apartheid State, originally published in 1987, he claimed Israeli legislation guarantees the rights of only a "subset of its citizenry." He followed its success with his autobiography, Crossing the Border, and his most recent release, Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within.

Davis resides in the Arab city of Sakhnin in northern Israel, although as a Jew, he may live anywhere in the state--a right denied to his Arab neighbours. Formerly a resident of south-western U.K. near Plymouth, he arrived in Sakhnin as director of external relations with the Arab Institute for Vocational Completion. And after his service there, he saw no reason to change his address.

In his article, Just an Ordinary Sakhnin Day, published in 2001, he writes: "After I get up in my flat, brush my teeth, shave, comb my balding scalp, dress and go out to the veranda to greet my neighbours, I see my city of Sakhnin surrounded by a circle of rather lovely leafy rural suburban communal residential localities-mostly perched on the mountain tops ... This is what I see from my veranda when I get up in the morning."

His adopted home is not a collegiate town, nor a trendy tourist locale. It's an industrial park with no industrial plants of which to speak. However, as the only Jew, he does not face life imprisonment for membership in an illegal organization. He does not have tanks outside his window threatening his children. He says he has yet to be denied access to hospital treatment, or delayed "indefinitely" at a military checkpoint--the usual indignities endured by Palestinians. Here, Davis' choice of residence reflects his commitment to a future in which all Jews and Palestinians enjoy equal rights.

Standing up as a Jew

His consciousness comes from the Holocaust. His Jewish mother's family was killed in World War II, following the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. "Her values underpinned my moral development and are universally relevant for all concerned, including myself," he remarked in an article in The Irish Times. In it, he also accused Israel of exploiting the extermination of Jews in Europe, describing it as "a direct assault" on his ancestors.

He says: "The publishing of any criticism of Israel charged with being anti-Semitic has been an instrument of intimidating critical debate on Israel for decades. It's therefore essential to base or anchor our narrative in fundamental separation between Zionism and Judaism. It's the most difficult obstacle that faces us."

Political Zionism, he says, is as a "wholly negative proposition."

"Zionist is not my identity. I operate on the basis of a clear distinction between Zionism and Judaism. I have nothing against the Jewish collective tribal identity or theological identity.. But Zionism is separate. It's a political program and has nothing to do with professional identity.

"I don't have a problem with Jewish identity; I have a problem with the claim that it is justified, that in the name of the national liberation of the Jewish people, to perpetuate crimes against humanity and war crimes."