The film was “Translating,” by the Israeli filmmaker Nurith Aviv, a series of in-depth monologues by translators from Hebrew into other languages, and the occasion the annual conference of the Israel Translators Association in Jerusalem. The audience, whose linguistic gaps were filled by Hebrew subtitles, could identify with the speakers’ singular strain of obsession, their solitude, and their implicit surprise at being for once in the spotlight instead of the shadows wherein they normally lurk. The symphony of the dozen or so languages in which these unsung laborers told their stories, all referring to the one language they shared and revered, was mesmerizing.

In Barcelona, Manuel Forcano, a lapsed Catholic, told in Catalan how translating poet Yehuda Amichai, a once-orthodox Jew, helped him come to terms with his faithlessness. The Lithuanian-born Sivan Beskin, in Tel Aviv, recalled in Russian how she began translating children’s stories by Lithuanian-born Israeli poet Leah Goldberg from Hebrew back into the poet’s native Russian, so that her immigrant parents could read those stories to her children. Near Paris, Itshok Niborski spoke in a Spanish-accented Yiddish of compiling a Hebrew-Yiddish dictionary of idioms.

At minute 1:03:00 of the film appeared the Israeli author Ala Hlehel, of Acre, introduced himself and explained that his native tongue, which he was speaking, was colloquial Arabic. He learned literary Arabic in school, and then Hebrew, which was “not a neutral language for me, it was charged.” He had only just begun to elaborate – “it is the language of occupation, but also of culture” – when the system crashed, those last words frozen on the screen, and a technician rushed over.

Hlehel must not have been on screen for more than 30 seconds when the film stopped, and one had barely begun to take in this new character and absorb his words. But no sooner had the audience realized there was a problem, when a young female voice in my row said out loud: “I’m glad it got stuck. I don’t like what he’s saying.” Then she added: “I don’t like his terminology. It’s not like he’s from the occupied territories, he’s from Israel.”

Trying to understand what there was not to like – the speaker had barely opened his mouth, what “terminology”? – I looked back at the screen, and there it was, the “O” word, hanging in the air, stuck right in front of our faces, with nothing to do about it and nowhere to go. I felt stung by my colleague’s rudeness. Whereas my engrossment in the film had transported me to that perfect place where we all listen to each other with full attention and respect, the women’s outburst reminded me I was still in Israel. The mixture of sheer discourtesy, intolerance and even incuriosity made me cringe.

How dare she hope Hlehel shut up before he even had the chance to say anything? I, for one, was extremely eager to hear what Hlehel had to say. I had first heard of the 38-year-old author two years ago, when he won a literary award in Beirut but was forbidden by Israel to travel to the ceremony – an administrative injunction he challenged in the Supreme Court and succeeded to overturn. Then, some months ago, a Facebook friend had shared a witty column Hlehel had written about the Arabs “wanting back” all the words Hebrew had “stolen” from them, often mispronouncing and distorting their meanings in the process.

Now here he was, about to share some of his thoughts on the profession that had brought us here today, our shared self-appointed mission of ferrying our insular cultural treasures safely into the bigger world. And after hearing how this was being done by an assortment of people who ranged from strangers to friends, we were now about to hear it from a more challenging perspective, that of our estranged cousins, our intimate nemeses, the Arab minority of Israel. For me it was a peak moment in the film. Yet, my colleague over there in the darkness had already heard enough.

While I waited for the organizers to fix the problem, I fumed. I felt the speaker was in the middle of a very personal confession about who he was and how he had become that person, and this heckler was denying him nothing less than his right of self-determination. I tried to analyze what he had said: Hlehel had referred to Hebrew as “the language of the occupation” and the disembodied voice had said that was not acceptable coming from him as he was not occupied. It took me a moment to locate the problem, but when I did, I was actually impressed at how instantly my colleague had processed the whole situation: in her reasoning, I realized, Hlehel was declaring that his native Galilee, part of Israel since it was founded in 1948, was occupied, which meant he did not recognize Israel, and therefore she, an Israeli, did not recognize him. The linguist in me kicked in: but that’s not what he said, I thought. He said Hebrew was the language of occupation, but didn’t specifically count himself as one of the people under it. He may or may not consider himself occupied but still call it the language of occupation. But even if he was implying he did not recognize Israel, do we Israelis have to be so terrified that we would rather end the conversation right there? I would like to think we have enough confidence to hear dissenting voices, not just ones that make us feel good, and contend with them.

Unfortunately, in today’s Israel, any voice that falls outside of the political mainstream is silenced with outrageous ease. How naïve of me to be surprised that happened here, at an international translators’ conference. It must have also been naïve of me to think anyone with a complicated enough identity to qualify for this line of work was as curious as I was about other people’s complicated identities. Here was one of our esteemed colleagues laying himself bare, exposing the clashes of his battling loyalties, ultimately leading to his amazing choice to dedicate much of his human capital to bringing his people the culture of their adversaries. It was surely the most painful of all the stories we had heard. But apparently it left some people cold.

Thankfully, our competent technician got the film running again and we got to hear Hlehel’s account of pillaging Israeli literature and making it available to the Palestinian people, perhaps getting even with us for all those stolen words. He overcame his initial resistance when he discovered the iconoclastic Hebrew playwright Hanoch Levin and couldn’t resist translating his work, beginning with “The Suitcase Packers,” about a group of people who all want to leave the country, but, instead, die.

The camera panned Acre’s jumble of cinderblock tenements with solar water heaters on their rooftops, with a glimpse of a strip of blue sea on the horizon, as seen from the window of the translator’s study. The translator reverted to his shadows and his silence.

I just got back from Leipzig’s #globalchange festival/demonstration. At one point, I noticed two guys holding up an Israeli flag, and went over to ask what that’s about. It was the only national flag present and I wasn’t sure what it was doing there. “We’re here to provoke,” said one of the guys. “This demonstration is structurally anti-Semitic.” The idea, of course, is that a demonstration with anti-elite, anti-banker sentiment is anti-Semitic, whether the demonstrators know it or not. I tried to argue against this odd rhetoric, but he quickly said he doesn’t want to discuss it.

These counter-demonstrators are, I gather, anti-Germans. This is a movement considered to be left-wing and anti-fascistic, with a commitment to unconditional solidarity with Israel. The paradox of the “provocation” I witnessed is that this was the only mention of the “banking=Jews” stereotype I could detect in today’s demonstration, or indeed in all of the Real Democracy Now activities that led up to it in the past half year. It seems to me like the anti-Germans were the only ones bringing anti-Semitism into the demonstration. It annoys me to no end that they weren’t open to discussion, and this post is my attempt to say what I would have told them if they were willing to listen.

I recently read a pamphlet titled “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere”, a fascinating guide to understanding and combatting anti-Semitism targeted at social change activists. It can be found online [PDF] and I highly recommend reading it, especially if you are involved in any kind of movement for social change. It makes the crucial point that anti-Semitism is:

“a divide-and-rule strategy that has served to maintain ruling classes, conceal who actually has power, and confuse us about the real systems of oppression that pit us against one another.”
(Chris Crass, Quoted on a now-defunct website hosting the pamphlet.)

Historically, rulers and ruling elites have used anti-Jewish sentiments to deflect the anger of the oppressed masses towards a relatively powerless group (Jews). In a way, it comes down to rulers explicitly or implicitly fostering the belief that the Jews, not the rulers themselves, are the problem.

What those anti-Germans were trying to do today was the same in reverse – delegitimizing an expression of legitimate grievance against the ruling class by claiming it’s an illegitimate expression of intolerance against Jews. This makes me pretty angry, I have to say. If I had detected any anti-Semitic sentiment or rhetoric from the demonstrators, I would go berserk. But I felt very comfortable at the demonstration, felt it was a matter of global solidarity, explicitly inclusive to me (with my irrelevant Jewish background) and to anyone else. The first thing that made me uncomfortable there was the anti-Germans with that big Israeli flag. How dare they insinuate that the German banking system is controlled by Jews? Where the heck did they get that idea?

You know what, I don’t actually know the names and backgrounds of any major German bankers. And I don’t need to. We were demonstrating against the absurd situation in which Europe and the world are in crisis yet the number of millionaires in Germany has only increased. We were demonstrating because we’re told things are going to get hard and we have to live in fear of economic collapse while those who were involved in creating this mess have nothing to fear and they continue to control much more wealth than the rest of us. Even if it so happened that 99% of German bank owners are Jewish, this wouldn’t have been an anti-Semitic demonstration.

Speaking out against someone who happens to be a Jew is not anti-Semitism. Speaking out against “the Jews” or attacking someone because they’re a Jew is anti-Semitism. Is those anti-Germans’ approach supposed to somehow protect Germany from a resurgence of anti-Semitism? Seems to me like at the very least, it muddies the waters and creates confusion about what is or isn’t anti-Semitic, making it easier for real intolerance to fly in under the radar. Even worse, it can actually re-enforce anti-Semitism by suggesting that speaking out against the powers that be is speaking out against Jews – supporting the false equation that “(the) Jews” are responsible for the power structures we live within.

There. I think I got it out of my system now. Has anyone else encountered similar situations, where people meaning to fight intolerance end up implicitly encouraging it?

In Germany, I have often heard that maintaining state control of the school system and its curriculum is important for maintaining democracy. This argument is used against the idea of private schools and homeschooling: if people can teach children whatever they want, the argument goes, religious fundamentalists of all kinds will raise the next generation for intolerance.

In Israel, this argument has now been turned on its head: Ha’aretz reports that “The Education Ministry has cut most of its budget for the intensive civics classes for 11th and 12th grades, and the regular civics classes for 10th grade, and will invest the sum in the teaching of Jewish studies.” Who needs to teach democracy, equality and civil rights when instead you can push a religion that is now being used by popular religious racists to promote and support the practice of killing children?¹

The good news for Israel is that it has a larger proportion of democratic schools than any other country in the world. ² These schools will be far less affected by these cuts, and moreover, students in democratic schools finish high school with years of first-hand experience in democracy. The bad news is that a major reason it’s so easy to start a democratic school in Israel is that the system is designed to let in religious schools with essentially no requirement that any particular topic be or not be in their curriculum. There are many more religious schools than democratic schools, and I’m willing to bet few, if not none of them, use that freedom to promote democracy and fight intolerance.

Totalitarianism cannot rise without having a firm control over education in some way or another. The governments of Germany — ridden with national guilt as they have been for the past 60 years — use their tight grip on education to promote democracy; but having such central control makes it possible for shifts in the opposite direction, like the one we are seeing in Israel right now. Wherever intolerance is fostered we must speak out against it and fight it. But a democratic state is always at risk of electing intolerant leaders, and in case that ever happens, we had better make sure those leaders don’t have the power to indoctrinate the young generation. As we say in EUDEC, democratic education is a sensible choice for democratic states.

Footnotes

1. I certainly do not mean to equate Judaism with this sort of racism. My family is full of terrific people who happen to be religiously Jewish and are at least as disgusted by this racism as I am. However, the mainstream in Israel does seem to support a rather nationalistic view of the religion, and the linked article reveals some very disturbing things.
2. I did not have the time to find a source to cite for this datum (a quick google search was not enough). I have, however, heard it many times; specifically, I recall Ya’acov Hecht saying that by sheer number of students in democratic schools, Israel has more than any other country in the world — even much bigger ones. There are about 30 democratic schools in Israel, which has a population of about 7 million. I know of no comparable situation in any other country today; the Netherlands had a similar proportion of sociocratic schools (which are a similar thing) but I understand that their numbers have gone down drastically in the past five years.