{"id":3477,"date":"2021-07-27T11:04:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T11:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/?p=3477"},"modified":"2021-07-28T14:01:59","modified_gmt":"2021-07-28T14:01:59","slug":"beautiful-feelings-in-literature-and-the-palestine-israel-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/beautiful-feelings-in-literature-and-the-palestine-israel-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBeautiful feelings\u201d in Literature and the Palestine\/Israel Relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

 \u201cBeautiful feelings make for bad literature.\u201d French literary tradition has proved Andr\u00e9 Gide\u2019s assertion wrong, of course. \u201cBeautiful feelings\u201d of empathy and commitment to equity infuse Victor Hugo\u2019s Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em> and Emile Zola\u2019s Germinal<\/em>, which have remained on the international bestseller list for over a century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photos of three books: (left) Rachel et les siens, (middle) Apeirogon, (right) The Holocaust and the Nakba<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Curiously post-1945 programs for reconciliation, another \u201cbeautiful feeling,\u201d among European formerly enemy nations, and which led to the establishment of the European Union (EU), have not inspired a Transeuropean literature. Robert Menasse\u2019s widely translated<\/a> novel Die Hauptstadt<\/em><\/a> is an exception. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Austrian writer and enthusiastic supporter of European integration by his own admission, pens a darkly satirical tale in which self-centered EU bureaucrats invent a \u201cBig Jubilee Project\u201d around the theme of \u201cAuschwitz\u201d to mark the 50th anniversary of the EU Commission. Historical facts are wrong, this is, after all, fiction, but the novel provoked heated controversies in the German-speaking world. Critics<\/a> felt that the novel \u201ccheapened\u201d the Holocaust by distorting its role in the foundation of the EU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may be that \u201cbeautiful feelings\u201dmake for good literature only when catastrophe is involved. But how to invoke empathy and peaceful conflict resolution in the midst of an ongoing catastrophe such as the Israel-Palestine conflict? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three recent and very different books provide a similar response: look to literature. The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History<\/em><\/a> <\/em>is an edited volume of social science;  Apeirogon<\/em><\/a> and Rachel et les siens<\/em><\/a> are novels based on historical facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half of The Holocaust and the Nakba<\/em> consists of comments on literary works, with pride of place given to Lebanese-born Elias Khoury searing novel Children of the Ghetto<\/em><\/a>, the fictional memoir of Palestinian expatriate Adam Dannoun, who was born during the all too factual Lydda massacre of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Co-editors Bashir Bashir and Amos Goldberg, who presented their book at CHGS<\/a> in October 2020, acquaint their readers with a much lesser-known Jewish Israeli literature also, which reflected in the late 1940s and 1950s \u201cthe feeling that the plight of Palestinians refugees bore a remarkable resemblance to that of the European Jews.\u201dMendel Man\u2019s An Abandoned Village<\/em> (1956), written in Yiddish and published in Hebrew, exemplifies this feeling, which was not confined to radical left-wing Zionist publications.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Metin Arditi\u2019s novel Rachel et les siens<\/em> (only available in French) offers a passionate and highly readable account of Jewish Israeli and Arab Palestinian\u2019s intertwined fates under 70 years of Ottoman rule, the British mandate, and Israeli rule. Rachel, an Arab-speaking Sephardi Jew, grows up with her adopted Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi sister in a middle-class home shared with a Christian Arab family in Jaffa. Already as a child, Rachel writes a theater play, which highlights the growing rivalry over land between Arabs and Jews and pleads for cohabitation. Multilingualism is both a practical necessity and a norm to be cherished. In 1937 she loses her daughter and her husband, a philosopher trained by Martin Buber, to a terrorist attack committed by Arab Palestinians. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To hide the identity of her second daughter\u2019s father, she moves from Tel Aviv to Istanbul and then Paris, where her plays are staged to critical acclaim. But she scolds herself for her \u201clies.\u201d Eventually, she returns to Israel to help raise a beloved handicapped grandson, whose genetic make-up includes Arab Palestinian and Jewish Israeli ancestry. The melodramatic plot stretches credibility at times, and yet self-reflective accounts of the protagonists compel the reader to identify with many Others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colum McCann\u2019s Apeirogon<\/em> is part novel and part factual account of two tragedies: Jewish Israeli Rami Elhanan lost his 13-year-old daughter Smadar to a Palestinian suicide bomber in Jerusalem in 1997 and Muslim Palestinian Bassam Aramin his ten-year daughter Abir in 2007 to an Israeli soldier\u2019s bullet in front of her school. Rami and Bassam had become friends well before Abir\u2019s death through the organization Combatants for Peace<\/a>, and they have spoken together against the vicious cycle of occupation and revenge in Israel and across the world many times since. The book draws the reader into the lived experiences of Palestinians and Israelis powerfully, although its 1001 narrative sections, several of which have no obvious relation to the main story, weakens emotional connection with Bassam, Rami, and their families\u2019 heart-rending stories occasionally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arditi, Bashir, Goldberg, and McCann refuse to recommend a specific political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, be it a confederation, a federation, a one-state or two-state solution. Their books express, however, similar \u201cbeautiful feelings\u201d: No, to nationalism and Occupation. Yes, to a binational solution for a joint Arab Israeli democratic dwelling. No, to the objectification of the other and silence. Yes, to speaking up authentically and listening. No, to conflating the Holocaust with the Nakba. Yes, to \u201cempathic unsettlement,\u201d which transforms \u201cotherness\u201d from a problem to be disposed of into a moral and emotional challenge. And yes to flawed political compromises and even reconciliation between the two peoples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering the tragic renewal of violence last May in Israel and the occupied territories, isn\u2019t this all pie in the sky? Renowned Israeli novelist Assaf Gavron acknowledges that books have little immediate impact. \u201cChanges are made slowly and by small bits.\u201d His advice<\/a> to the writing profession: Be humble and keep writing.  Arditi, Bashir, Goldberg, and McCann need not be reminded. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Catherine Guisan<\/em><\/strong> is an independent scholar and Associate Professor affiliated with the Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Her research interests include European politics, politics of reconciliation, social movements for democratization, political theory. To read more of her work see: <\/em>Un sens \u00e0 l\u2019Europe: Gagner la Paix (1950-2003)<\/em><\/a>, A Political Theory of Identity in European Integration: Memory and Policies<\/em><\/a>, \u201cOf Political Resurrection and \u2018Lost Treasures\u2019 in Soviet and Russian Politics<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 \u201cBeautiful feelings make for bad literature.\u201d French literary tradition has proved Andr\u00e9 Gide\u2019s assertion wrong, of course. \u201cBeautiful feelings\u201d of empathy and commitment to equity infuse Victor Hugo\u2019s Les Mis\u00e9rables and Emile Zola\u2019s Germinal, which have remained on the international bestseller list for over a century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2081,"featured_media":3478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96689,96814],"tags":[263,3006,3217],"class_list":["post-3477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-filmbook","category-reflections","tag-israel","tag-literature","tag-palestine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/files\/2021\/07\/IMG_2836-rotated.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3477"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3483,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477\/revisions\/3483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}