by Palestine Center Interns
On October 16, 2015, the Palestine Center hosted Israeli researcher Noga Kadman as she presented her recent book, Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948. Kadman’s presentation focused on different mechanisms used to build the collective memory of Israelis after the 1948 war and aspects of marginalization and erasure of Palestinian villages from Israeli consciousness. She argues that this resulted in a picture for Israelis that theirs is a Jewish country with very little Arab history and geography. Kadman asserts that it is very important for Israelis to see with open eyes what happened in the past in order to take responsibility for the harm that was caused and to move forward.
This interview with Noga Kadman was conducted by the Palestine Center Interns.
What sparked your interest in learning about the ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages of 1948?
I was working for years in human rights organizations in Israel, documenting human rights violations in the Occupied Territories and being introduced to that. I became curious to learn more about the history of the conflict and what happened before the occupation and why there were refugee camps in the West Bank. So this brought me to study more about the conflict and the history, and in addition, traveling in Israel and visiting those places that used to be Palestinian villages, and realizing that these were villages. So I wanted to learn more about this, about the encounter between Israelis and the villages.
What does the average Israeli know about these villages?
Quite a few Israelis know that this was an Arab place or an Arab neighborhood in the cities, but it’s just like a title. It’s not deeply understood what it means, that people used to live here not so long ago and what happened to them. And also the magnitude, how many villages, how many people, what happened to them–we don’t have enough knowledge.
So, it’s a distant history to most Israelis…
It’s not only distant, we didn’t receive enough information to have this knowledge [sink] in and be part of the picture and history.
How is this history taught in most schools, if at all?
When I grew up, it was not taught at all. We studied about ‘48, about what we called the “war of independence” and also about the war of ‘67, but we studied just the military aspect of it, and what army came from here and here; nothing about refugees and occupation and all that. Now, it’s changing in the last twenty years. It depends on the schools and the teachers, but there are textbooks that mention it or refer to it and try to make a more balanced view of history. But it’s still marginal and controversial, so in school, you still don’t learn a balanced view of history.
What is it like working at an Israeli human rights organization in a society that is increasingly right-wing?
It’s not easy because many people who work in human rights work for their own oppressed society. But in this case, it is the opposite: we work for another people that our country oppresses. But to many people in our own country, we are perceived as traitors by helping the enemy who wants to kill us. So it’s difficult in many ways: you both encounter very difficult stories and situations of what happens to the Palestinian, and you feel you are responsible in a way because you are part of this country; and you also have constant struggles and discomfort in your own society.
Do you find a good deal of support from fellow Israelis?
Yes, there is. There are many, many groups, human rights groups, political groups, who try to work for the Palestinian cause in this way or another. There is a lot of that, but in general, it is not the mainstream. The mainstream are people that have a good heart. They are not aware or they are dealing with their own things, they have their own prejudices and it is difficult. I often avoid saying what I do. I just say I work in research and writing, a social justice organization, something more general. Or I say I work for ACRI, an organization for civil rights in Israel, which is true, I work with them sometimes, but they also deal with rights to medical care for Israelis. That sounds less controversial.
Many of the Jewish voices in your book offer a deeply sympathetic and remorseful perspective on settling depopulated Arab villages. Why is this, and why are their voices significant to understanding the depopulation and the subsequent repopulation of Palestine?
The people themselves, the Jewish refugees that came, they didn’t chose the situation to live in a house of someone who lost the house. They also lost houses, and many of them – I don’t know how many – but some refused to receive empty houses of Palestinians. They said, “This happened to us, we cannot do it to others.” But many, they didn’t have much choice. They were offered an Arab house, and yes some felt discomfort in this way or another but generally after the years, they accepted that …this is the reality, this is the inevitable, “We have to defend ourselves, this is a conflict and if it is not us living in their houses, they would live in our houses and we would be somewhere else.”
And with the first wave of immigrants, you mention the systematic erasing. How was this done to the children of the immigrants who were now living in these new homes and maybe were not aware of the memory that existed?
They all know that this place used to be an Arab village before. They mention it in their [the immigrants’] publications. It’s a well-known fact. I also grew up in Jerusalem, in a Palestinian neighborhood and we knew it’s an Arab place, but nothing went beyond this. It is just a title. You don’t really understand what it means and you don’t talk about the people themselves and where they are and what happened to them in ‘48. And you know the history of the place, it was Arab and it was also Roman before and now we are here and we don’t think much about what happened there before.
It’s not something that the [first generation’s] parents would talk about with their kids? Or was it something that they dealt with internally?
The first generation who came, they sometimes dealt with it [the difficulty of living in formerly Palestinian homes] but I found that in most places they didn’t deal with it. In some places, they dealt with it a lot. But also the first settlers, the first generation, they were struggling very hard for their own survival, to build their home in a new place. It was very usually ruined [from the war] and very difficult to live in so they didn’t always deal with the moral issue sometimes but that was a thing with the first generation. Later on, the second and third generation don’t deal with it really because they didn’t encounter the houses with the [Palestinian] property inside and sometimes the refugees themselves. The houses they live in, it’s not really a reminder, a concrete reminder of the refugees [for the second and third generations].
Could you discuss the role of national parks and state-owned spaces in the continued erasure of Palestinian villages?
The physical erasure was completed pretty early on, but then there were changes in landscapes sometimes covering the ruins by planting trees on them, making them into recreational parks and forests. And national parks were declared in many places where there used to be Palestinian villages because those villages sometimes were sitting on places that were more ancient than the national park was going to preserve. In those places, sometimes the important past is considered ancient past, and sometimes what is more new, like the [Palestinian] village, was not considered important. Many times, the buildings of the village were erased so you can excavate the more ancient layers. And also the information that is given to tourists in these places focuses on the more ancient history and sometimes ignores the village information and it is very partial. Sometimes they mention a building but they skip the history of the village. They will mention “Ottoman” but not mention Palestinian.
The Jewish National Fund [and other state and non-state funded groups] will plant non-indigenous plants in these public parks. Why is that? Why non-indigenous?
They began planting trees since the beginning of the 18th century. At first they began planting to make it seem more European, to make it look like a forest they were familiar with. So it was mostly pine trees, lots of them. But in the last twenty years, they realized that for environmental reasons, it was not so good, it would not survive well, it will not last storms. Pine trees are very weak and they don’t allow other plants to grow under them. So now they’re trying to make a variety, to plant local species, and some pines, too. There are some native pines in Israel, too, but the ones they planted are not native. In many places, it totally changed the landscape. There are places that are covered with pine trees… even in the desert. The biggest Jewish National Fund park is in the desert, in north Be’er Sheva.
The views expressed by speakers, writers, and others do not necessarily reflect those of the Palestine Center or The Jerusalem Fund.
The Palestine Center is a non-political, educational forum and does not take positions on issues.
