Can intellectuals of the region unite?, Shlomo Avineri

Opinion, July 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Can intellectuals of the region unite?

Shlomo Avineri

The Daily Star, 7/12/03

The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci once made the distinction between what he called “critical” and “organic” intellectuals. Critical intellectuals are typical of developed civil societies, in which intellectuals view themselves as critics of power and generally as nonconformists. Organic intellectuals are more prevalent in societies where individual moral responsibility is not highly developed and see themselves as spokesmen for a collective identity. The latter frequently appear in societies still in the throes of nationalism.
This distinction may be helpful in assessing the role of Israeli and Palestinian intellectuals in their respective societies. It may also explain why so many attempts at “dialogue” between intellectuals from both societies have frequently been disappointing.
Most Israeli intellectuals writers, academics, artists view themselves as moral critics of their own society, standing in the prophetic tradition of “speaking truth to power” the power of their own society. Hence the Israeli press (and Israeli literature) are full of intellectuals and writers viewing Israel’s society its politics, government, dominant myths and narratives through critical lenses: Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman are just three of the more prominent writers who represent this critical vein in Israeli intellectual discourse. Most of them view themselves as good Israeli patriots in a generalized sense, but do not shy away from criticizing Israeli policies or some of the dominant Israeli myths. There are obviously exceptions, but this critical role is true of most Israeli intellectuals.
Most Palestinian (and Arab) intellectuals view their role differently. They act not as vehicles for criticism of their society and its dominant values, narratives, and myths, but rather as the true bearers of Palestinian (and Arab) nationalism. It is for this reason, for example, that the most radical criticisms in Egypt or Jordan of the peace treaties with Israel have come from intellectual circles. For them, any accommodation with Israel, let alone Zionism, is a breach of faith, if not outright treason.
These intellectuals may be variously Nasserites, former communists or Islamic radicals, but they are indubitably intellectuals. Few are the intellectuals in the Palestinian or Arab community in general who dare to speak truth to power, or question the basic narratives of Arabism. What has happened in recent years to perhaps the one truly critical Egyptian intellectual, Saadeddine Ibrahim, or earlier to Sadeq Jalal al-Azm in Syria, just shows how rare are the cases of nonconformist intellectuals in the Arab world.
This state of affairs has far-reaching consequences for the general weakness of civil society and democracy in the Arab world. It is this discrepancy between the self-images of Israeli and Palestinian intellectuals that makes the encounter between the two groups so futile. In the hundreds of recent Israeli-Palestinian dialogues, a familiar pattern has emerged: Israeli intellectuals usually appear, to various degrees, critical of their own government’s policies, occasionally also of some of the basic tenets of Zionism.
Palestinian intellectuals, on the other hand, repeat the Palestinian narrative, criticize Israel, its policies and sometimes its very existence. Hardly ever does one hear a Palestinian intellectual questioning Palestinian policies, let alone the Palestinian master narrative. If there is criticism of the Palestinian Authority, it is that it is too accommodating to Israel, or that it is corrupt, the latter being merely a generalized accusation. Israeli universities hold dozens of conferences, in many cases with Palestinian participants, in which various degrees of criticism of Israel are voiced. Hardly anything similar can be seen in Palestinian or Arab universities.
It is due to this symmetry that so many Israeli-Palestinian dialogues became one-sided with both sides criticizing Israel. This is why some Israelis have found these dialogues a sham and an exercise in futility.
It is difficult to accept the excuse that as long as Palestinians are under occupation they cannot appear to be “disloyal” to their national narrative. Arab countries are not under occupation, and yet the lack of critical intellectuals in them is glaring compared, for example, to the courageous appearance of many critical intellectuals in present-day Iran. And in the Israeli case, critical intellectuals appeared in the pre-1948 Jewish community, in the excruciating debate about whether to use terrorist methods against the British.
Will this discrepancy between the disparate self-declared roles of intellectuals in these two societies change? I don’t know. Yet the appearance of the United Nations Development Program’s Arab Human Development Report, written mostly by Arab intellectuals, is a meaningful and hopeful harbinger of the possibilities of fundamental change.

Shlomo Avineri is professor of political science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This is a revised version of a commentary taken from Bitterlemons.org, an internet newsletter that presents Palestinian and Israeli viewpoints on public issues

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).