The Heralded and Unheralded May 8

For a long time May 8 has been a very memorable day for me—a day I have relished and even celebrated. Strange, though, it isn’t a birthday or anniversary of anyone in my close knit circle of love (although May is “littered” with birthdays of friends of the highest order—I mean you’ve got Junko, Aunt Dot, Stephanie, Liz, Megan, Dawn, Mary, Rick, Gary, Anne, and my father—whew!—and a very special nephew who is 6 years old this very day!) nor a major “holiday” along the lines of Thanksgiving, Independence Day or Christmas.

But every May 8 I stop and remember how big of an impact May 8, 1985 had on me as a young historian. That particular May 8th was the 40th anniversary of what has become known as “V-E Day,” the victory in Europe at the end of the long Second World War. That spring semester I had had the wonderful good fortune to study in Salzburg, Austria (one of those times that easily ranks as among the best decisions of my life) learning so much about international diplomacy, music history, art history, traveling, and living with a family in gorgeous Salzburg. I was nearing the end of my European adventure, and traveling alone for a few days before meeting friends of my grandfather’s from his war days in England. On that May 8, I was in Aachen, Germany in the morning, and visited a famous cathedral, and happened upon a memorial service. It was a very solemn affair, with black-clad, teary Germans weeping some forty years later at what that crushing loss still meant for them. The pain in their faces haunted me that day as I contemplated how Germans must approach that date every May. That evening I ended up in Brussels, Belgium—not far at all geographically from Aachen, but light years away in terms of how they celebrated May 8. Fireworks lit up the sky in Brussels and I got caught up in a parade, a celebration, a veritable party for the victory of the Allies.

Ever since that day with my good luck to see how commemorations were different on both sides of WWII (or maybe it was good planning, I don’t remember which) I have kept in mind how the very same day can be observed in markedly divergent ways.

Ten years later, in 1995, I was in New York nearing the end of my year with the Klingenstein Fellowship (another time that easily ranks among the best decisions of my life) as May 8 came around for the 50th anniversary of the cessation of hostilities in Europe. I celebrated on the naval aircraft carrier the Intrepid, moored in Manhattan, and spent the sunny afternoon with hardy, happy WWII vets and hearing speeches from Big Names in NATO. I remember that many of the speeches harbored the same sentiment: given the 1991-92 implosion of the USSR, the world was entering a period philosophers now dubbed “the end of history.” Hmmmm…Another May 8 to file away for the existential scrapbook.

Here I am, savoring another May 8, in a new locale. I would add that I can easily mark the decision to come here as an important decision, and probably another, among the best decisions of my life. But this May 8 is a wholly different celebration/acknowledgement than I have ever contemplated. May 8, 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the independence of Israel. I will admit—I don’t believe I have ever really stopped and thought about Israel’s joy over independence after roughly two millennia of Jewish exile. But just as I found on that long ago May 8 in Aachen and Brussels—there is more than one side to a story, or truly, more than one way to observe a day of independence.

I knew that this year May 8 would have new meaning for me—last week as the date fast approached there were probably a dozen articles in The Jordan Times reviewing the 60th anniversary and what it meant to Jordanians. So, as any fairly intrepid historian might do, I began to interview my new Jordanian friends about what this anniversary meant to them as Jordanians. It is Aachen and Brussels all over again…

One friend said to me, “While there will be great fanfare in Israel on May 8, for 60 years Israel has been sitting on my heart. It kicked me out of my home, my nation, and deprived me of many things.” Our librarian referred to the fact that when Israel proclaimed independence, the new state also uprooted hundreds of thousands of people. This friend, along with nearly everyone else with whom I spoke, referred to the contrast of the Israeli joy to their naqba—their ‘catastrophe’ and the beginning of 60 years of violence and distrust.

I had an email from a friend recently telling me, “I hate to say it, but I imagine the readers of your blog are tired of hearing about it,” matter-of-factly bringing up conflict in the Middle East. Tell me about it. Imagine what this has been like for the people of this region over the last sixty years. But that is the beauty of a blog—I feel compelled to write about something, and you may or may not choose to read about it! Ha!

Certainly Israel has been one of the biggest success stories of modern times. A nation was reborn out of Holocaust survivors and uprooted Jewish communities who built a booming economy, created an innovative agriculture, and, correct me I am wrong, revived a dead language. They also sustained a democracy (however imperfect and dysfunctional democracies usually are) that is vibrant.

But also, as we look at commemorations of this version of May 8—Israel was born in war, and has lived by the sword ever since. In November, 1947, the United Nations acted to partition Palestine and end the British mandate in the area. According to historical record there were about 1.4 million Arabs who lived in Palestine, and by 1949 more than half of those had been displaced. What verb you choose to use says something about on what side of the fence you fall, for how you celebrate the Middle Eastern May 8. I read one article that said that “Palestinian scholars—and some Israeli scholars, say it was systematic ethnic cleansing ordered by Zionist leaders to clear the way for the Jewish state.”

Whatever “verb” you choose, it is interesting how poignant, how ever-present the stories of the refugees are—it is easy to find someone willing to discuss the effect of this diaspora on their family, the bitterness of dispossession and exile, and how they cling to a “right of return.” One of my dear friends at Hackley, the only Palestinian I had met before moving to Jordan, related to me her family’s story, and, in the most heart-wrenching part, confided that one of her parents continues to wear the family’s house key around the neck in the dear hope that they might return to the family home. Another colleague here reminisced: “We had houses and land and olives and grapes and prickly pears and dates. Now what do we have? Nothing.”

Of course those hundreds of thousands had to go somewhere—some fled to the United States, but many fled to Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. From what my friends here say, refugees are treated poorly, especially in Lebanon (laws barring refugees from many professions, subjection to violence and massacre, etc.) Israel firmly opposes letting refugees return to their original homes (of course many were bulldozed decades ago, reminds a colleague). An editorial in the paper quoted Chaim Weizmann, one of the founders of Israel, calling this displacement of Palestinians “the line of less injustice.” I guess this was the belief that the persecuted Jews had to have their state even if it meant depriving Palestinians of their right to self-determination. Maybe the Israelis see this “right of return” as a kind of Palestinian Trojan Horse—believing that Palestinians want to return to their homes, their orchards, their villages, their churches, so that they can undermine the Jewish state from within.

Isn’t it simply about justice? Thousands of families were pushed out in the wars launched after Israel’s establishment. They have a right, a human right, to return to their homes if they desire. Of course, the ever-present violence and suicide bombing has inured us to the pain and struggle; we lose sight of the nearly 5,000 Palestinians and more than 1,000 Israelis killed since the year 2000 over this issue.

There is violence. There is division. There is hopelessness. If you can imagine the famed painting Guernica by Pablo Picasso, you might say that the catastrophe of Guernica mirrors some of the catastrophe known to the Palestinians. Yet, in the horror of his black-and-white expose, Picasso also paints a tiny hand, almost obscured by the terrible incidences, but a hand, nonetheless, holding a little flower. Could it be the long view of history affording us some hope?

As I scanned the news for reports of such hope during the build-up to this anniversary, I found a tiny article, one of dozens my father clipped for me from The Cincinnati Enquirer (I will never be bored on a plane ride since my father makes sure I have plenty of reading he has clipped so lovingly for me!) that had something that seemed like that tiny flower Picasso placed in his work. The headline from this March 26, 2008 story reads, “Saudi King Calls For Talk Among Religions.” King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has made what the reporter called an “impassioned plea for dialogue among Muslims, Christians, and Jews, the first such proposal from a nation with no diplomatic ties to Israel and a ban on non-Muslim religious services and symbols.”

Maybe it is just another conference. The call does not discount the naqba my Jordanian friends suffer as they mark another year away from the heartbeat of their homeland, but finding that flower in the painting always changes Guernica from a resignation of despair to a flicker of hope, and if it took Jews 2000 years to recover a homeland, maybe my Palestinian friends will one day be able to speak of the naqba as a historical phenomenon. The end of such a historical phenomenon.

Wonderful May 8—so much to savor…