Haim Bresheeth: ‘Israel has turned the people of the book into the people of the tank’

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When we log on to Zoom for the interview, Prof. Haim Bresheeth has just returned from a pro-Palestinian student rally, one of many he has been invited to in recent months, in the UK and elsewhere. Ever since the Israeli army began its genocidal operation on Gaza, Prof. Bresheeth has been going out of his way to explain and contextualize what is happening as part of a long colonial project; however, his voice as an anti-Zionist Israeli Jew is not finding any interest among the mass media. “The BBC interviewed me four times during the demonstrations in London. None of them were aired. They don't want to hear what Jews like me have to say.”

There are plenty of reasons why Prof. Bresheeth’s perspective deserves to be taken seriously. A retired professor of media and film, filmmaker, photographer, historian and author of a number of books about Israel and Palestine, he has spent the past 50 years building bridges between cultures, working at British and Israeli universities, most recently at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) in London.

He was born in Rome in 1946, in a refugee camp where his parents found shelter, Polish Jews who had survived Auschwitz. “But as stateless people they could not get a visa, either to stay or to go to other countries. The only solutions offered to us were to return to Poland, where anti-Jewish sentiments had not diminished, or go to Israel. Ever since the Evian conference, Zionists like Ben Gurion had opposed visa policies for Jewish refugees. We had no choice.”

Prof. Bresheeth and his parents arrived in Israel shortly after the founding of the state. “Like many of the newcomers, my parents were not Zionists. My father was a pacifist and was imprisoned as soon as we got off the ship for refusing to join the army. Later he was drafted as a doctor.” He recounts how the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) became a form of education for his father, as for thousands of others. The IDF was the topic of Prof. Bresheet’s last book, An Army Like No Other (Ed. Verso, 2020), with a telling subtitle: “How the Israel Defense Forces made a nation.”

The central point of your book is that the IDF is not merely an army, but the very essence of the Zionist project. What do you mean by that?

I believe that to understand what is happening in Gaza, and what has happened since 1948, one must understand this institution and its role in the social structure of Israel. Israel was born with the Nakba, the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians from their homes, fields, cities, and villages. Without understanding the IDF, one cannot understand what happened afterward. The IDF is Israel, no more, no less.

Primo Levi, a moderate Jew, called Israel a “military state.” What are its defining traits?

The identity of this people and the identity of the state are a product of the IDF. In the majority of states, it is the reverse: the state creates an army and the army serves the state. In the case of Israel, it is the army that created the state and defined its Zionist identity. Many of those who were in Palestine in 1948 did not speak Hebrew and were not even Zionists. Ben Gurion, Israel's first political leader, said in those early years: we have a state, we have an army, but we do not have a people. Gurion used the army to make a nation out of people of many identities. The army taught them Hebrew, made up their identity, but it also taught it to children, at least until the mid-sixties, in the villages of the new arrivals."

It was a social engineering project.

Exactly, a great social engineering project that took place at the expense of the identities and cultures that people brought with them. For example, ninety percent of Jews arriving from Europe spoke Yiddish, but this was not acceptable in the new state. In the 1950s, production of theatrical texts in Yiddish were not allowed, and publications, newspapers, and books in Yiddish were taxed, unlike others, a punitive tax. Many Israelis are still unaware of this today.

What were the consequences of the role of the army for Israel's history?

Israel has managed to transform the people of the book into the people of the tank, the rifle, the missile. In my book, I try to analyze the role played by the IDF by highlighting the social, political, cultural, and racial particularities of the Israeli colonial project, because that is what it is, a colonial project that takes shape at a time when colonialism elsewhere was waning. Through the use of biblical myths, it has managed to create an ultra-militarist and oppressive society, and the effects are what we see today.

Ilan Pappe thinks the war on Gaza will lead to the downfall of the Zionist project, Do you agree?

The Zionist project is on its knees, but it will not end tomorrow or next year. Indeed, historians and activists now understand that Zionism has outdone itself: Israel is the only country that is simultaneously being investigated by the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the UN, and many other organizations. This has never happened before with any country. It is a result that highlights the severity of the crimes committed, to the point that we are talking about Jews involved in a case of genocide. For someone like me, it is the worst thing one can imagine: Jews involved in a genocide! There is nothing Jewish about genocide, nothing Jewish about apartheid, and nothing Jewish about colonialism. And there is nothing Jewish about the Jewish state. Judaism has had 2000 years of history, experiences, traditions, conditions of life in the diaspora. Jewish communities in Europe and Arab countries were not militarized. This is a departure from Jewish history!

You are insisting on the history, but the public discourse around the current events is limited to October 7.

In the West, the media and public discourse have focused on October 7, but there is a pattern, a history, and this has implications for young people as well. When I meet students, I ask them, when did you decide that Palestine was a cause worth engaging in? Some say December 2023, others March 2024, after the killing of some Westerners. They are astonished to hear an Israeli Jew talk about the history of these things. No one has told them, for example, about the famous Ben Gurion's hand gesture. When, during a cabinet meeting, they asked Gurion: 'What do we do with the Arabs?', he made a hand gesture indicating: 'Out.' Things just happened like that, what we are witnessing did not begin on October 7."

What would be a way out?

A ceasefire is only the first step, necessary but only the first step. A political solution is needed. This situation has been going on for 76 years. But Zionism will not allow a political solution because its goal is to empty Palestine of its indigenous Arab inhabitants. This has always been its goal. And it has failed. It has turned itself into a pariah state committing genocide!

At the same time, there is no shortage of critical views within Israel.

The country is very divided between the old and the new elites. We are on the brink of a civil war. Many say and write this openly, but outside of Israel, this does not register It is not a purely political division, although broadly speaking, two camps can be identified: on one side, the Ashkenazi ‘left’, and on the other, the religious right. These two realities cannot coexist in the same country; they have different values and visions. The only thing that unites them is their hatred for the Palestinians. They are armed camps, and I fear that the Palestinian territories will again bear the brunt of this internal conflict. Under the fog of what is happening in Gaza, terrifying daily crimes are being committed in the West Bank. If the world does not put a stop to Israel’s crimes, we will have a Nakba 3 after Nakba 2. Nakba 2 has already caused three times the number of victims as the first Nakba.

So you are not optimistic that internal pressure could lead to an end to the war?

The genocide that Israel is committing is perfectly democratic because everyone Jewish supports it. A survey by Tel Aviv University found that only 3.2% of Israeli Jews do not support the genocide. Israelis are not forced into this genocide – they do so willingly. Even academics believe it and write about it. For me, a society that commits genocide is not sustainable, it has no future. And indeed, in Israel, they talk about continuing the war for decades, and if the rest of the world allows it, that is what they will do.

What do you think about the Western media's double standards in reporting on the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza?

I am originally a media historian, but these days I struggle to listen to Western media, their lies. It is terrible, but not so difficult to explain. In Ukraine, there is a NATO war going on. Even though Ukraine is not formally a part of it, it is NATO that keeps this war going. A week after the Russian intervention, a blockade was triggered, shared by the entire West. If you define Russia as a terrorist state, everything you do against it becomes justifiable. None of this has taken place against Israel – no sanctions, no boycotts, no end to the western world support of the genocide! Terrible example of double standard in all Western media!

What about Gaza?

Israel is not a member of NATO but is a major component of the Western camp; it is seen as a Western outpost in the Middle East. What we are witnessing is a conflict between the West and the rest of the world. Italy, Germany, and Britain are among the largest suppliers of arms to Israel, and of course, the USA. The West supports Israel with weapons, money, diplomacy, and lies, especially with lies. All mainstream media are lying because they defend Israel. It is not difficult to understand. Gaza id is not just an attack by Israel – It is an attack of the EWest against the poorest people on Earth, to teach them a lesson – “Do not even consider opposing us!” Like other western actions, this is brutal, unjust and doomed to fail!

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Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/israele-ha-trasformato-il-popolo-del-libro-in-quello-del-carro-armato on 2024-06-28