Why Israel can’t talk to Palestinians

“Today there are 450 Israelis in the municipality of Hebron and 120 000 Palestinians. I have to keep three battalions to protect them. I believe, with all due respect, that values – Jewish and universal values – have to guide our policy. I can’t call Hebron a Jewish city. It was, but to impose on 120 000 Palestinians the fact that there are 450 Jews there and for that reason to have military rule? I don’t feel the justification for that.” – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin [TIME, November 13, 1995]

Contrary to popular belief, the Israeli-Palestinian ‘Peace’ Talks didn’t break down because of Jewish settlement expansion in East Jerusalem and West Bank. Neither because Israel reneged from an agreement it had with US Secretary of State John Kerry that they’ll release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Palestinian Authority not initiating applications to 15 United Nations agencies.

Interestingly, though Israel tried to align its negotiating strategy with the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard currently in US custody in North Carolina; it was not because of the US refusal to swop Pollard for concessions that collapsed the talks. 

They broke down simply because the US refused to guarantee Israel’s security. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sulked and walked out because the very purpose (Zionism) of the establishment of Israel was self-determination and ‘security for the Jews’. The post-World War II global order determined that any people not secured risk being exterminated; nobody wanted a repeat of the Nazi Holocaust.

I see you are wondering ‘what security can be offered to a nuclear armed country?’ A country with the world’s fourth largest and most sophisticated military. Israel’s definition of ‘security’ is not ‘military’; it’s an assurance that it is, and will always be a Jewish State with a demographic that will never be altered even by population growth. The Zionist narrative, which is the bedrock of Israeli-Jewish nationalism’s final solution is not to have legislation in almost all capitals protecting Jews but to have Jews quarantined with privilege inside a space between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea – mostly with dual citizenships so that they can escape back to ‘exile’ in the event that their ideal does not suffice by 2018.

 That is why they forcefully relocate Bedouins as part of the Greening the Negev process, under-develop Israeli-Arab areas and sterilized emigrant Ethiopian Jews to cull their numbers before they upset the cart with high birth rate. While white Jews from all over the world can emigrate freely to Israel; Ethiopian Jews were cleansed purely for being Black – that is called racism.

 That assurance of Jewish purity inside a ‘Jewish Caliphate’ is the fallacy of Israel’s precondition to negotiate with Palestinians. They know Palestinians and the civilised world will never accept that apartheid and they want the US to endorse such Fascism. They want guarantees that they’ll be the world’s only designated ethnocracy while the world is already entertaining thoughts of a One State for Two People after the erosion of the neo-conservatives Two State ideal.

Now, even with all the military hardware and technology they can give Israel the US can’t guarantee ethnic purity because it goes against the inclusive democracy culture it claims to espouse – the foundation of its Constitution. This is regardless of Kerry blurbing “The government of the United States and the president supports the notion of Israel being defined as a Jewish State”. He says ‘being defined’ not ‘being’ and then he tries to push that ambiguity down Palestinian throats.

 Even with the American public being passive and condescending; and a pro-Israeli Senate and Congress, Kerry can’t get such guarantees past both Houses. The US Congress is not made up of Zionist Jews but Zionist sympathisers who in their own private space know that Netanyahu and his team are clutching straws.

For the US to accept [the fallacy, not notion] that Israel is a Jewish State; an apartheid state will mean that it limits the legitimacy of its own citizens to be treated equally in that ethnocracy. We have seen some beaten by Israeli Police for being both American and Palestinian. In Bibi’s demand only American Jews will have the right to emigrate and settle there while holding on to their American passports even though a bulk of them; who are not Jews will become second-class citizens if they are even allowed to settle in Israel or marry there.

First and foremost America’s responsibility is to protect Americans wherever they are in the world, including Israel. To endorse a country where such protections [equality and justice] cannot be guaranteed is a ‘NAY-NAY’ even for a Congress dependent on Jewish lobbyists for everything from funding to advice.

Now you know why the Three Musketeers, Bibi Netanyahu-Naftali Bennet and Avigdor Lieberman continue to build settlements on Palestinians lands; they are altering the facts on the ground to get their Jewish State by default – and the US whose hands are tied is aware and opts to look the other way as Israel gets its ‘security’ by demolishing houses and changing the demographic of West Bank, Negev and East Jerusalem.

The sooner Israel abandons the narrative of Jewish State the better since that fantasy will never happen. It needs to start talking to Palestinians instead of talking over their heads to the Americans. In the final analysis Palestinians are not even going to be its neighbours but fellow countrymen in one homeland. 

Kerry said earlier this year that if the negotiations fail Israel risks becoming an apartheid state. Well, Mr Kerry, Israel already ‘is’ an apartheid state. 

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Somali born author scoops South African Lifetime Achievement Award

Novelist Nuruddin Farah won this year’s South African Literary Award (SALA) for Lifetime Achievement. The award presentation was held at the National Library where seven other winners received their accolades from the Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthetwa.

 Farah is the author of eleven other novels which have been translated into more than twenty languages and have won numerous awards, amongst them Kurt Tucholsky Prize, Neustadt International Prize for Literature and others.

 Other stars that shone on the glittering night were gender activist and poet Makhosazana Xaba who together with Refilwe Malatjie shared the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award. This award is inspired by the late Nobel Laureate and was granted for their respective short story collections, Love Interrupted and Running & Other Stories. In granting the award the judges felt that “Malatji and Xaba are two authors who seem to have made a deliberate decision to write stories that speak of women struggles in a patriarchal society. Their narratives expose the world of womankind without marginalising society in their endeavours.”

Creative Non-Fiction Award went to Sihle Khumalo for his inspirational travelogue across Francophone Africa titled Almost Sleeping My Way to Timbuktu. Its strong point was a feeling by the judges that its treatment of Africa’s governance challenges post’ liberation was a lesson necessary for Africa as it seeks its own renaissance. “Khumalo’s exploration is hits the bull’s eye because his decision to tour West Africa without a crash course in French meant he was above being influenced by the culture of the place. His was a mirror approach; telling it like it is without fear of shaming the native.”

 Claire Robertson won the First Time Published Award for her 278 pages hard cover novel The Spiral House. “As you know, a head is a deal heavier than it looks. That is one reason you do not want to drop it anywhere near your feet”. Any novel with such as blurb is mesmerizing without apologizing.

 Nhlanhla Maake scooped the Literary Translators’ Award, a feat that is becoming a habit for this prolific author and intellectual. Also getting awards were Jamala Safari (The Great Agony and Pure Laughter of the Gods) and Thandi Sliepen (The Turtle Dove Told Me). Both won for K.Sello Duiker Memorial and Poetry Award respectively.

 The big winner on the night was Farah especially given the situation in his country of birth, Somalia which is officially a failed state with African Union troops trying to maintain a semblance of order. While Farah lives in Cape Town and New York, where he is Distinguished Professor of Literature at Bard College, his triumph is not lost in the chaos engulfing Baidoa where he was born 69 years ago.

 Farah’s subjects revolve around colonialism, feminism and nationalism with notable works including From a Crooked Rib, Maps, Gifts, Secrets etc.

 An Amazon review of his novel From a Crooked Rib notes, “Written with complete conviction from a woman’s point of view, Nuruddin Farah’s spare, shocking first novel savagely attacks the traditional values of his people yet is also a haunting celebration of the unbroken human spirit”

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Will the Real Wole Soyinka Please Stand Up?

In a conversation I recently had with an intellectual friend of mine we looked at what education brings into people’s lives; whether it civilizes them or exposes their inherent prejudices. It’s been Africa’s post- colonial realisation that the allure in Western democracy is largely the erosion of traditional leadership and a replacement with elected (often illegitimate) leaders.
During colonial order one of the things the French and English did was to co-opt co-operative traditional leaders and elevate them to community leadership; often over tribes who had their own Kings and Queens. That was a dictatorship unique to Africa. A system that collapsed with the blowing of Harold MacMillan’s ‘winds of change’.

 However the collapse of colonialism was soon replaced with a deep quest for ethnic identity; which went ags Thomas Sankara. The nation was soon replaced with a tribe; and the tribe wanted to concentrate power on itself at the detriment of other’s development.
Some say there’s nowhere where such is more visible than in Nigeria with its hundreds of tribes and no national identity. A Nigerian friend said ‘in the Federal Republic of Nigeria there is nothing called Nigerian’ but an Igbo, Yoruba etc. The Nigerian identity only exists outside of the country that has invested much to bury under rubble the genocide of Biafra. That blockade that resulted in the starvation and death of more than a million Biafrans seems to be the elephant in the room whenever two Nigerians, no matter how educated meet.

It’s like my scholar friend said, ‘the problem with Nigerians’ obsession with tribe before nation is that for some of them the more educated they become, the worst tribalists they make’.

It’s no wonder many people who have studied Nigeria’s struggle with tribalism have attributed Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s denial to accord fellow ‘Nigerian’, the late author Chinua Achebe the same ‘nobel’ opportunity, though posthumously to tribalism and professional jealousy. In a story that appeared in The Guardian newspaper on 20 May 2013, Soyinka, a towering figure in African literature when asked about calls to confer a posthumous Nobel Award for Literature on Achebe reportedly said, “It has gone beyond 'sickening'. It is obscene and irreverent”.

 In the same story written by journalist Alison Flood, Soyinka gave reasons why he felt that Achebe was not the revered Father of African contemporary literature as Western opinion makers branded him. “Those who seriously believe or promote this must be asked: have you the sheerest acquaintance with the literatures of other African nations, in both indigenous and adopted colonial languages? What must the francophone, lusophone, Zulu, Xhosa, Ewe etc literary scholars and consumers think of those who persist in such a historic absurdity? It's as ridiculous as calling WS [Wole Soyinka] father of contemporary African drama! Or Mazisi Kunene father of African epic poetry. Or Kofi Awoonor father of African poetry. Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate”.

 However some people close to the issue; who understand that there are at least four Africans who could equally nominate Achebe given the Nobel rules that a Laureate has such a prerogative, have argued that Soyinka was not playing his cards open and that his opposition to Achebe’s nomination is driven by tribalism. They argue that him being of Yoruba descent and Achebe of Igbo meant his denial to endorse a fellow author and Nigerian was a continuation of Nigeria’s obsession with rewriting history for ethnic expediency.

 In an old interview on 28 April 2005 with freelance journalist Simon Stanford for the Swedish Academy Soyinka expressed his satisfaction with the fruits that accrued after he won the Nobel Award for Literature in 1986. He acknowledged that among those was the swelling of his constituency, increased prestige and monetary benefits; which then left many wondering why at some stage on the same interview he would say “you have monsters like Chinua Achebe who come up from time to time and who would have died a happy man if he'd succeeded in hanging a Nobel Laureate for literature.”. Achebe was still alive then.

 Why was, and still is Soyinka so opposed to Achebe enjoying the same fruits which’s sweet taste he knows all too well? "This conduct is gross disservice to Chinua Achebe and disrespectful of the life-engrossing occupation known as literature. How did creative valuation descend to such banality? Do these people know what they're doing – they are inscribing Chinua's epitaph in the negative mode of thwarted expectations. I find that disgusting", he reportedly told Sahara Reporters.

 However differences in intellectuals meritocracy are not new. Sudanese academic, scholar and writer Prof Taban Lo Liyong once took a jibe at his celebrated Kenyan contemporary Ngugi wa Thiong’o, accusing him of seeking glory at the expense of the collective and blocking his professional elevation. “He never thought of lowering the ladder to help me climb up to a senior lectureship. When one day a colleague of ours were discussing this turn of events, and I had said I never thought Ngugi could be that bad, the late philosopher – sage Professor Henry Odera-Oruka cautioned us thus: ‘Don’t call a man bad until he has been tested by opportunities. It’s only after he has responded to temptations and fallen or not fallen that you can now call him good or bad”.

 To finally give capital to those who believe Soyinka is engaged in an exercise of professional jealousy driven by tribal apprehensions, he questioned the merits of famous Things Fall Apart, “Was it the Nobel that spurred a young writer, stung by Eurocentric portrayal of African reality, to put pen to paper and produce Things Fall Apart?"

 With only four Africans having won the Nobel Award for Literature, Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, South African’s Nadine Gordimer and JM Coetzee being the only ones; save for Gordimer who passed away early this year, being one of the few who can nominate Achebe for the award, all eyes are once again on Soyinka if ever he will retract his stance on the issue or will continue to believe that “He (Achebe) deserves his peace. Me too! And right now, not posthumously”

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