1. Introduction: Sources of the Jew’s Image in the Palestinian Novel
The interest in studying the image of the other is increasing among literary students, because of the connotations it carries, as the image is a source of knowledge, with the information it provides about a people or a society; it, also, helps to deepen self-understanding as the other is often seen through the self and through its vision. At other times, the other is evaluated through the agreement with the self or difference from it. "The image of the other arises from a consciousness, no matter how small, of the ego compared to the other.
| [1] | Suleiman, N. (1985). Self-Awareness and the World. Latakia, Syria: Dar Al-Hiwar. p. 73. |
[1]
p. 73". This means that the image is formed through the awareness of the self and the other. This image is part of the social imagination and the cultural or ideological space within it. Thus, "the literary image represents an intellectual vision through its presentation of a cultural reality by which the individual or group who formed it can discover or translate the cultural or ideological space within which they are located.
| [2] | Hamouda, M. (2000). Applied Approaches to Comparative Literature. Damasc us, Syria: Arab Writers Union. p. 109. |
[2]
p. 109".
In Palestinian literature, writing about the Jewish the other has been linked to the Arab-Zionist conflict, an echo of it and a mirror that reflects its course. Despite the presence of Jews on the Palestinian land since ancient times, their image did not appear in Palestinian literature as a different group, because their presence on the Palestinian land as a religious minority did not disturb the Palestinian writer who did not perceive them as a danger until the emergence of the Zionist movement, whose goals aimed at establishing a national home for the Jews in Palestine.
With the increase in the immigration of Jews to Palestine and the resistance of its people to this coming danger, the state of hostility started to grow and escalate; Palestinian literature, as a result, began to paint pictures of the Jew, who had become an enemy. "Palestinian writers differed in their approach to the personality of the Jew according to the different stages of the conflict with him and the location and position.
| [3] | Al-Osta, A. (1992). The Jews in Palestinian Literature 1913-1987. Ramallah, Palestine: Union of Palestinian Writers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. |
[3]
pp. 13-14". When a meeting with him was possible, there were those who distinguished between a Jew and a Zionist, and between an Arab Jew and another immigrant who came from overseas. In return, there were those who took a hostile stance towards all the Jews, considering them their enemies. The Palestinian writing of the Jews was influenced by what was written about them in European literatures, in the Old Testament and in the Holy Qur’an, in addition to direct contact with them. In
The Warrior, 1920, Khalil Beidas was influenced by the character (Shylock) in
The Merchant of Venice, as he portrayed greedy Jewish characters who would do anything to obtain money, as did Muhammad al-Adnani in his novel,
The Bed, 1946. But that does not mean a lack of writers who tried to paint a true picture of the Jewish the other as it is on the ground, without dropping their intellectual visions on it, so the image of the Jews seemed positive at times and negative at others, as in the stories of
Shimon Bazajlo and
Days of Life by Najati Sidqi’s.
| [4] | Najati, S. (No date). My Sad Sisters, Cairo, Egypt: Dar Al Ma’aref. pp. 16, 75. |
[4]
pp. 16, 75.
After the year 1967, the image of the Jews differed in Palestinian literature. The writers of exile and inside focused on portraying humane Jewish personalities based on the Marxist ideology that many of them believed in, as in the novel
The Last Photo in the Album by Samih Al-Qasim, the image of the Western Jew who feels superior to the Eastern Jew and the Palestinian alike
| [6] | Al-Qasem, S. (1990). The Last Photo in the Album. Jerusalem: Dar Al-Nawras. |
[6]
. Some of them depicted Jews coming from Arab countries, who feel alienated and not integrated into the Israeli society, as in the story
Early this Morning by Riyadh Bidas
| [7] | Ghanayem, M. (1995). The Difficult Orbit: The Journey of the Al Palestinian Story in Israel. Haifa University. p. 399. |
[7]
p. 399. The last picture came upon it by some Arab writers who wrote about the Arab Jews, such as Ibrahim Al-Jabain in his novel The Dia ries of aJew from Damascus.
| [8] | Al-Jabin, I. (2007). A Diary of a Jew from Damascus. 1st ed. Damascus, Syria: Khotowat for Publishing and Distribution. |
[8]
.
The Palestinian writer continued to portray the image of the Jew based on his political position on the issue of conflict with him, and he made no effort to portray the Jew from the inside to create human figures from flesh and blood. Since the year 1987, the beginning of the first intifada, tension and conflict between Jews and Palestinians increased, and the meeting between them receded to be limited to be militarily, with the heavily armed soldier
| [9] | Al-Osta, A. (1995). “The impact of the Intifada on the vision of the occupied territories storytellers in the year ‘67 for the Jews, Gharib Ashqalani and Yaqoub Al-Atrash, as an Example.” An-Najah Research Journal, Vol. 3, Issue 9. |
[9]
p. 354.
This matter found an echo in the Palestinian literature among local and exile writers who began to portray the suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers, who stole their lands and killed them without mercy or compassion, as in Ahmed Harb's novel Ismail, 87.
As for the image of the Jews in the texts completed after the Oslo Accords, it appears negative, contrary to what is expected. It expressed the disappointment of the revolutionary and the intellectual Palestinian and their clash with reality. In the novel
Remains of 96 by Ahmed Harb, Arnona represents the impossibility of coexisting with the other in the stage of peace. Her marriage to Hadi ends in failure, after the time of the uprising continued during which they resisted every difficulty they faced, but in the stage of peace, Arnona returns to her religion, cursing the day she married Hadi. In Yahya Yakhlof's novel,
A River Bathes in a Lake, the writer sees the possibility of coexistence with the other is not at all possible
| [10] | Al-Osta, A. (1998). Literature of Resistance from the Optimism of the Beginnings to the Disappointment of the Endings. Ramallah: Palestinian Ministry of Culture. pp. 25-27. |
[10]
pp. 25-27.
Kamil Abu Hanish appears in his novel Mariam Miriam like other Palestinian writers in his presentation of the image of the (Israeli) Jew, who has become a reality to an extent that justifies the search for a way to coexist with him as an actual entity. However, this coexistence does not mean ceasing to deal with him as another, but rather transforming him to a subject of knowledge away from the traditional ideological patterns and molds that governed the attitude towards the other, knowing that every attempt to define the other implies in depth an attempt to define oneself.
The image Kamil presents as an inclination to the Jews in his novel comes in line with his Marxist orientations, far from the stereotypical image of the Jews, in which one does not find specific descriptions or ideas about the Jews, such as describing them as miserliness and worshiping money or harnessing their women to reach their goals or accusing them of infidelity and killing prophets and messengers. The image of the human Jew, along with the image of the enemy Jew, is based on his experience of living with the other in the occupied Palestinian interior, in the battlefields in the streets of Palestinian cities and villages or at military checkpoints, and from his readings on Hebrew literature. The image of the ego and the other will look alike in this novel accordingly, because the image of the other is not complete except through defining the image of the self, based on the approach of opposite mirrors. So, how the ego portrays itself and the other in the author's imagination has to be traced.
Research Methodology: Descriptive research method.
2. The Writer, Narrator and Novelist
Mariam Miriam, a 263-page novel of a medium volume, contains between its two covers 19 chapters. The author defines its space. Palestine is the largest and most comprehensive place for its events, while Saffuriyya, the neighborhood of al-Safafra, the cities of Nazareth and Ramallah, and the settlement of Zippori, built on the ruins of Saffuriyya, are the most important locations for its events. As for the time, it varies between that of the events and the narration that begins in the second decade of the 21
st century, as its narrator Ibrahim says: "And now in the second decade of the 21
st century of the birth of Jesus Christ... I stand every day on the balcony of my grandmother Mary in the neighborhood of Al-Safafra. I overlook my destroyed town, Saffuriyya.
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 14". The time of the events goes back before the year of the Nakba (1948), and continues to the second decade of the 21st century.
The novel presented by Kamil, in an interwoven and complex fictional fabric, tells the story of the human being on the Palestinian land through a tale, whose hero and narrator is the well-known Ibrahim/Abra, who is complicated in his cultural and even biological composition. Two different and opposing cultures make up his personality. He says, "I am a real human being, who bears burdens, troubles and pains.... I am the Palestinian and the Arab, and I am the one on whom the Israeli nationality was forcibly imposed. I am the son of Western and Eastern cultures, the son of times and dates. I live with multiple personalities that struggle within me and always quarrel with me.
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 15". It is the fruit of an Arab-Jewish mixed marriage. He wanted to tell his narrative as he wanted as long as there was no agreed-upon one. He tried to reconstruct the story, so that he could overcome the past that is fraught with violence and hatred, that extends into the present, and searches for a future in which life is more secure and calm, away from problems and conflicts. But he discovered that the issue is complex, governed by both ideology and history. Therefore, he was not always absent from the question of identity, of belonging, of conflict and of solution, and, finally, the struggle of life and its usefulness.
The narrator of the novel, along with the writer, leaves space for his characters to narrate about themselves and others, and express their opinion on the conflict between the ego and the other, the possibility of peaceful coexistence between the two parties, and ways to end the conflict. So Kamil's novel seems to us a novel of ideas, or what is called a thesis novel, with all its formal and semantic characteristics
| [12] | Pinkrad, S. (1996). The Narrative Text Towards Semiotics of Ideology. 1st ed., Rabat: Dar Al Aman. p. 57. |
[12]
p. 57. It is somewhat similar to Ghassan Kanafani's novel
Returning to Haifa, which was dominated by the intellectual approach to the issue of the Arab-Zionist conflict
| [13] | Ashoor, R. (1977). The Road to the Other Tent: A Study in the Works of Ghassan Kanafani. Beirut, Lebanon: Dar Al-Adab. p. 144. |
[13]
p. 144, in which Farouk Wadi saw it as a novel of political dialogue
| [14] | Wadi, F. (1985). Three Marks in the Palestinian Novel (Ghassan Kanafani, Emil Habibi, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra). 2nd ed Acre: Dar Alswar. |
[14]
.
The novelist in
Mariam Miriam is framed by the writer's focus on central Jewish and Arab personalities, to embody his vision. These characters seem to have knowledge of history, religions, mythology and philosophy, through which the author proposes a set of ideas and convictions on the issue of truth and justice, and who is more entitled to the land historically, culturally and religiously, and peace and coexistence between Jews and Arabs through the conflict between the Mariams, the grandmother of Ibrahim (Mariam the Arab and Miriam the Jewess), whom the reader discovers that they are originally one Mariam, even if they belong to two different histories and cultures, but they refer to one identity that is reconciled with itself. "Palestine was called Mariam or Miriam before it bore another name. Moriah refers to the countries of the Canaanites, who are the inhabitants of the country.
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 256".
In the novel, the issue of identity takes a collective dimension, deep in the ancient history and mythology, so that the reader discovers that history, with its cultural and religious implications, is a fleeting shift, and the constant is this land on which the Canaanite, the Aramean, the Palestinian, the Jew, the Assyrian, the Persian, the Babylonian, and the Greek lived... in which their fates intersected, intermarried and worshiped one another’s gods, differed and fought; they left their mark in space and time
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 103. The Canaanite is the original identity of this country, and everyone who came to it added some of their culture to its original identity. Jews and Arabs lived on this land before the Zionist colonial project that established another meaning for the collective identity based on distorting the facts of history, to build a new fragile history, in which the identity of the land is summarized and made confined to a hostile duality (Jewish or Arab), with no solution. Two peoples lie in wait for each other, and each is in the abyss. One of them denies the other, and his existence means the suffering of the other. The novel, with its confusing visions for the ordinary reader, the intellectual and the critic, appears complicated in its political presentation, the problem of asylum, and the possibility of resolving the conflict, has many propositions in the words of some of its characters that it presents in the form of visions, ranging from acceptance of the return of some refugees or their compensation, or crossing the bridge from all sides to form a secular state or war. However, the reader sometimes touches the writer’s bias towards the choice of war and force through the heroine of his novel, Mariam, who believes that the return of the Palestinians to their homes and towns requires war. "We had to resist from the beginning, and insist on returning to our homes, even if we were all killed... just as it forced us. Upon leaving it by force of arms, we will return to it by force of arms
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 191". This vision was presented by Kanafani in his novel
Returning to Haifa by its hero, Saeed S. who saw that the recovery of the Dove and the House needed war
| [15] | Kanafani, G. (1993). Returning to Haifa. Jerusalem: Palestinian Center for Studies and Publishing. p. 75. |
[15]
p. 75.
But the solution of force appears in Kamil's novel a disastrous and inhuman despite truth and justice. The Jews have triumphed over the Arabs and formed their state on the ruins of the Palestinian people who became refugees in their homeland and in exile. What if the opposite happened? What is the fate of the Jews who were gathered by the Zionist movement? Will they be thrown into the sea?
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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P. 176. This is how the novel says in its implicit discourse, and not a certain bias centered around the structure of the novel. So, the suggested solution to solve the conflict is crossing the bridge from both sides to establish a secular state, as suggested by Anat, Ibrahim’s sister, who saw it as a fair solution for both parties, and no one paid any attention to it.
3. The Image of the Jew in the Arab Mirror
The novel presents the image of the Jewish the other through a group of Jewish personalities which differ in their stance towards the Palestinian the other and in their vision of resolving the conflict, peace and coexistence. The writer gives a wide space for the Jew in his novel to be a narrator and narrated, as he writes about a living reality in which the Palestinian and the Jew who are trying to steal what is left of the Palestinian land and eradicate his memories in the place he controls. Despite the bad deeds of the Jews in Palestine, the writer, like other Arab novelists, presents an image of the human Jew, that initially appeared in the Western novel as a result of the change in the nature of the Jews’ relations with the Europeans after the Industrial and French Revolution, in addition to the image of the lost Jew or
Shaylak, which was prevalent in European literature until the beginning of the 19
th Century. As the Western novel, the Arabic novel showed the image of the Jews, the human being who lived a normal life like other members of his community, far from the misleading Zionist ideas, maintaining his independent concepts from which he based his own convictions. In the past, Ihsan Abdel Quddus showed this image in his novel
The Spy and My Jewish Friend.
| [16] | Al-Shami, R. (1992). The Jewish Character in the Literature of Ihssan Abdal-Qudd us. Cairo, Egypt: Dar al-Hilal. pp. 169, 186. |
[16]
pp. 169,186. This image is presented through his narrator, who does not have a fanatical stance towards the other Jewish. "We are enemies by virtue of the conflict on the ground…. The hostility is not an inherent in our nature as Arabs and Jews.
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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P. 185". Therefore, he tries to touch his humanity by focusing on the suffering of the Jews and the injustice they were subjected to on the hand of the Nazis in Europe, through the character of Mariam, who gave her the space to talk about her suffering in the Nazi camps and her loss of all members of her family in the Holocaust, as well as through Adam, who lost his family, also, in the Nazi Holocaust, which combined with Miriam a common feeling of losing the family. So they married in New York and immigrated to Israel, and settled in the settlement of Zippori on the ruins of the destroyed town of Saffuriyya.
Here, the reader notes that this novel is not like other Arab ones issued at the beginning of the 21
st century; they presented a striking picture of the human Jew, and condemned the injustice that Jews were subjected to in their whereabouts, far from the bloody conflict on Palestinian land, and the massacres and dispossession that the Zionist occupation created and stole the identity and the Palestinian land. This oppressed Jew vision was presented by Mataz Fatiha in his novel
The last Jews of Alexandria | [17] | Fatiha, M. (2013). The Last Jews of Alexandria. Cairo, Egypt: Dar al-Kutub. |
[17]
, and by Jasem Al-Matier in his novel
TowLovers from Mesopotamia.
| [18] | Al-Matir, J. (2003). Two Lovers from Meso potamia, Beirut, Arab Sciences House. |
[18]
.
3.1. The Human Jew (and the Attitudes Paradox)
The image of the Jew the human being shows the novel through the character of (Miriam, Shlomit, and Anat) far from the image of the Jewish woman who harnesses her body for money, pleasure, or other purposes
| [19] | Abu Al-Naja, H. (2002). The Jews in the Arabic Novel, Dar Hawma. pp. 25-45. |
[19]
pp. 25-45. This bad image of the Jewish woman has had a presence in many Arab novels, such as in the novel
The Heir by Khalil Beidas, Esther has more than one relationship at the same time.
| [20] | Beidas, Kh. (2011). The Heir. Ramallah, Palestine: The Digital. |
[20]
. And in the novel
The Lady from Tel Aviv by Rabi Al-Madhoun, Dana Ahova's sexual relations vary between Jews and Arabs.
| [21] | Al-Madhoon, R. (2010). The Lady from Tel Aviv, 4th ed., Beirut, Lebanon: The Arab Foundation for Studies and Publishing. |
[21]
. So in this novel, Miriam seemed to be a beautiful, educated woman, an artist full of emotions, and a grandmother, loving her grandchildren, Jews and Arabs, not different from Mariam the Arab in terms of kindness, motherhood, loss and tragedies, except that she is contradictory in her positions; such a contradiction is caused by the Zionist thought that stands a dark wall between the Jew and the Arab
| [22] | Shalhat, A. (2007). Self-Deception ' The Israeli Theater and the 1967 War, and Selections from Hanoch Levin's Works'. MADAR, the Palestinian Center for Israeli Studies, Ramallah, Palestine. pp. 43\19. |
[22]
p. 43. Because of this thought Miriam feels that her presence in Palestine contradicts that of the Arab, or at least realizes that it is being done at his expense. Thus, she feels a twinge of conscience when she sees the displaced residents of Saffuriyya in the Safafra neighborhood near Nazareth, and she sympathizes with them, because their tragedy is like hers. However, this sympathy is no more than a romantic sympathy that goes beyond the historical reality and ignores it. She accepted to base her happiness on the ruins of the Palestinian and his happiness. She accepted to be transformed from a victim to an executioner. Despite her suffering at the hands of the Nazis, we see her rejecting the principle of restoring rights to their owners and abandoning the house and the land that she lives on; Palestine is her country, which was liberated from gentiles; she is not responsible for another tragedy, but war is the reason for that. The Arabs have chosen war, and they have to bear its results; the victor is the one who decides the fate of the vanquished; it is not fair to leave the place where her children grew up and have memories and friends. It became their hometown
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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pp. 176, 234. Indeed, it goes further than that in justifying its presence on the Palestinian land, and the establishment of the Jews for their state on the ruins of the Palestinian people, including the persecution and massacres to which the Jews were subjected to.
In her position on the peace agreement, Miriam lives in a state of contradiction, as she is with peace because it compensated her for her tragedy, kept her in her home and did not return it to its owners. At the same time, she fears that it will not be fulfilled and continued because it did not satisfy all parties, and underestimated the tragedy of the Palestinians and the scars of their soul. To get out of the impasse of the conflict, she believes that the solution lies in compensating the Palestinian financially to buy a house anywhere in Israel, while she refuses the compensation for the eviction of her house if she is offered this
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 177.
As for her daughter, Shlomit, she seems the closest to the image of the human Jew, as she is a left-wing artist and intellectual who belongs to the second generation of Jews who occupied Palestine. She opens her consciousness from a young age to the human tragedy. Her mother’s talk about the Nazi Holocaust made her take sides with the oppressed, and get rid of the dependence of her Zionist father’s ideas that do not coincide with her human identity. Since she was young, she loved Arabs and sympathized with their tragedy. She says, "We found them human beings like us, not as my father described them as monsters
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 82". So, she was disgusted with what the Jews had done, who displaced the Arabs and took their place. Because of her opposition to occupying other people's lands, she refused military service in the Israeli army in the West Bank, and preferred to spend the period of her compulsory conscription in administrative assignments within the army camps in the occupied territories of Palestine in the year 1948. After the 1967 war and the Israeli expansion of occupying what remained of Palestine and Arab lands, several trends appeared in Israeli society regarding this event, ranging between supporters and opponents; some of Jews rejected the principle of occupying others' lands by force and recognizing them as part of the State of Israel, which has turned into an occupying state.
| [23] | Allam, A. (2005). The False Myth: The Departure of Zionism and the Search for an Alternative. Egypt: Dar Al-Uloom for Publishing and Distribution. p. 58. |
[23]
p. 58.
On the basis of Shlomit's human feeling towards the other, and her belief in peace and coexistence, she loved a Palestinian and married him against the will of her and his families; their relationship lasted for four decades. Their love was full of pure human relations, which she wanted as a bridge to transcend the past and live as human beings.
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 250. The continuation of the relationship between them suggests the possibility of coexistence between the "I" and the "other" within a secular culture. But the boycott of the family indicates that there are fears and doubts on both sides that make the possibility of coexistence between them difficult. The Palestinian society, as well as the Israeli society, seems unprepared for the growth of normal human relations between the two parties. The dim possibility of coexistence between the Jew and the Arab, was expressed by Arif al-Husseini in his novel
Kafer Al-Sabbat.
| [24] | Abu Hanish, A. (2016). "The image of the Jew and the image of the Arab in examples of the Arab novel at the beginning of the 21st century," unpublished doctorate dissertation, Amman, Jordan: The University of Jordan. pp. 155, 156. |
[24]
pp. 155-156.
Anat appears like her mother, Shlomit, who loves peace and coexistence with others. She belongs to the third generation of Jews who occupied Palestine. A new generation born on Palestinian land is open-minded and wants to live life away from the wars and the troubles of the past
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 19. She sympathizes with the Palestinians who became refugees in their homeland, and believes that the Jews are the reason for the injustice and persecution that happened to the Palestinians. She has a strong bond with her Arab brother, despite the fact that they are in two hostile camps by virtue of the conflict on the ground. She does not care about the peace agreement signed between the enemies, and believes that the best solution to the conflict between Jews and Arabs is for the two parties to live in a secular state alongside each other
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p178.
In the context of the image of the human Jew, it is noticed that the writer, despite his attempt to present this image, was unable to distance it from that of the enemy Jew. Anat, like Shlomit, was not strong enough to be free from the invaders' dictionary, for they described the Arabs in negative terms. In the context of Shlomit's narration about her fear of the victory of the Arabs in the war, she described them as savages, as she labeled the Palestinian resistance fighters whose father was killed in a clash with them, as terrorists, forgetting that these are those whom her father forced them to leave, robbing them of their land and home. At the time of the intifada, Anat changed her convictions and now supports her state's bloody practices against the Palestinians, because as she sees, they carry out barbaric terrorist operations, and her state is fighting them for the sake of peace
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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pp57, 222, 238.
3.2. The Zionist Jew / The Enemy
Adam embodies in the novel the image of the Zionist Jew / the enemy. He immigrated to Israel, which he was eager to go to after losing his family in the Holocaust. There in Israel, he fought alongside the Zionist gangs in 1948, contributed to the killing of Palestinians and their displacement from their homes and towns, and in the establishment of settlements on their ruins. In the year 1967, he participated in the occupation of what was left of Palestine. Like other Zionists, he sees that Palestine is their country, which they liberated it from gentiles, and restored the right to its owners
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
[11]
p. 83.
He was full of hatred for the Arabs, describing them as monsters and saboteurs. Out of supremacy over the other, he was raising his children to hate Arabs, telling them stories about the dirty-evil Arab and the brave-noble Jew
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p 60. Such a picture could be found among many writers of the Zionist Jews in their stories and novels. The crystallization existential phobia of Arabs has arisen in the Jewish community since its formation, which a major cause for hating Arabs. In Jewish religious culture, there are forms of fear intertwined with hatred toward non-Jews (referred to as 'the others').
| [22] | Shalhat, A. (2007). Self-Deception ' The Israeli Theater and the 1967 War, and Selections from Hanoch Levin's Works'. MADAR, the Palestinian Center for Israeli Studies, Ramallah, Palestine. pp. 43\19. |
[22]
p. 19.
Pinhas represents the Zionist project in its ugliest form, with its grudge and hatred for everything that is Arab. He is a Zionist lover of war. He joined the army to complete the career of his father, who was killed in a clash with Palestinian resistance fighters. He sees in the Arabs scums and enemies. From this point of view, he boycotted his sister, Shlomit, when she married a Palestinian. He rejects peace with the Palestinians because he wants Palestine from the river to the sea; he demands Greater Israel.
3.3. General and Sporadic Pictures of the Jews
Within the frame of the image of the other, some Arab characters come on public pictures of the Jews, so they seem to speak the ideas and convictions of the writer. Mariam, the heroine of the novel, sees them as strangers who expelled Palestinians from their homes and lands and established their happiness at their expense
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 173. Few of them feel ashamed and guilty of conscience that reminds them that they are settlers like Miriam, who and her ilk have turned from victims to executioners, accepting to live on the ruins of other Palestinians.
Abraham sees them reducing the Holocaust to the Jewish burning, and trying to turn it into a symbol and memory, while they try to obliterate the memory of the Nakba, and mock the tragedy of the Palestinian
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 173, their blood is mixed, there is no pure Jewish race, they belong to different nationalities and races, and mixed marriage is evidence of the impurity of Judaism and its attributes, despite their rejection of this kind of marriage
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
[11]
p. 241. On the other hand, Elias distinguishes between a Jew and a Zionist. For him, Jews are not the same, and the Zionists are only the enemies who stole his home and land, and trample on the bones of his father and grandparents
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 73.
Within the framework of the self-perception of the other, the author presents a stereotypical and traditional image of the occupation army, as is the case with many Palestinian novelists, as the Zionist army attacked Palestinian cities and villages with tanks and planes, committed the most heinous massacres, destroyed many Palestinian villages and towns, obliterated their landmarks, and established Jewish settlements in their place. Such brutal practices were and still continue to be observed by the protagonist Ibrahim while he was a student at Birzeit University, as he witnessed the barbaric operations of the occupation army, and its suppression of Palestinian demonstrators with live bullets and tear gas. He also witnessed settlers confiscating Palestinian lands, uprooting olive trees in an attempt to Judaize the place and obliterate its Arab features, as did his uncle settler Pinhas when he uprooted the fig tree that represents the memories of his grandmother Mariam in Saffuriyya
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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pp. 163, 238.
3.4. The Image of the Jew in a Mirror of Himself
The image of the Jewish self- varies according to the attitudes of the Jewish personalities that they present. Miriam, the Zionist settler, provides justifications for the Jews’ occupation of Palestine, as she believes that the Jews were in exile, persecuted without their dignity. When they immigrated to Palestine, their conditions became better; their tragedy does not begin with the Holocaust, but extends for thousands of years, among peoples who kept shedding their blood, and lived as strangers among gentiles without a homeland or state. Finally, they returned to the homeland of fathers and grandfathers. Kanafani came up with these justifications in his study
of Zionist literature | [25] | Kanafani, G. (1982). In Zionist Literature, Beirut, Lebanon: The Arab Research Foundation. pp. 139-195. |
[25]
pp. 139-158; Myriam asserts her right to this country, as it is not a settlementon the ruins of others, "I returned to live in my country. Every inch of this country bears witness to our history. We are not settlers, and we did not come from another planet, but we are the legitimate owners of the country
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 195", forgetting that the Palestinians have no part in the injustice and persecution that happened to the Jews.
Contrary to the previous image, Shlomit sees that Jews are raising their children to hate Arabs, as her father used to tell them stories about the evil Arab, and the brave-noble Jew. When she grew up, she discovered the falsity of this image. The practices of the Jews made her see them as villains and thieves who lack a sense of humanity; their occupation of Arab lands transformed them from victims to executioners
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 83.
This image, even if a number of Arab novelists who preceded Kamil in writing about Jews came to, appears new, because it is presented from the angle of a Jewish vision that perceives the memorial of the Holocaust as a danger which generates Nazi racial tendencies in Israel
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 255.
"Anat seems close to seeing her left-wing mother considering the Jews responsible for the tragedies that happened to the Palestinians, as they destroyed their homes, confiscated their property, did not allow them to return to their homes and towns, and considered them absent, present, without compensation or even recognition of their tragedy. This is inconsistent with the moral claims of the Jews and their belonging to a free and democratic world
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 177".
4. The Image of the Arab in the Mirror of Self
4.1. The Palestinian Who Rejects Oslo Agreements and Clings to the Right of Return
The novel reflects a positive image of the Palestinian self. Mariam, the protagonist of the novel, represents a model for the Palestinian, adhering to the right of return to his land and homeland, living the bitterness of asylum and displacement, residing in the neighborhood of Al-Safafra, near Nazareth, within sight of her destroyed village, Saffuriyya, on whose ruins the settlement of Tzippori was built. Her husband was martyred in defense of his town before it fell to the hands of the Zionist occupier and expelled Palestinians from it. During the migration, she gave birth to her eldest son, Elias, under a pomegranate tree. When he grew up and married a Jewish woman, she severed her ties to him, but she loved his son Ibrahim more than the rest of her grandchildren. Tales of asylum, humiliation and exile are printed in her memories as a recorded tape, which she narrates dozens of times without forgetting a letter.
Mariam rejects the Oslo agreement, seeing in it the end of the Palestinian dream of returning, "Only today I realized that I will never return to Saffuriyya
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 106." She feels the bitterness of the living reality and believes that the Palestinians should have resisted to return to their homes even if they were all killed. The question of return will not be in the form of a favor or a lean agreement, but rather with raised heads. Therefore, she refused the offer of Jewish Miriam to return to her home or to compensate her for it, because the issue is not divided into individual cases. Rather, it is an issue of a people and a bitter struggle, and the dream of return. If the dream is not realized in the foreseeable future, the children and grandchildren will inherit it until it is fulfilled; its realization needs war. ''As they left under threat of arms, they need to return with threat of arms
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 191. This vision is similar to Saeed S.'s vision in Kanafani’s novel
Returning to Haifa, who saw that the return of the Palestinians to their homes and towns requires war. This solution will not be in the foreseeable future, so Mariam passed away, burdened with her pains and dreams that were not fulfilled, and was buried in Nazareth far from her home and town of Saffuriyya. But the paradox is that the Jewish settler Miriam, who took Mariam’s place and her home dies after days of Mariam’s death and was buried in Saffuriyya instead, before they reconciled or met. With their death, the narrative struggle ends, without ending on the ground.
4.2. The Palestinian Seeking Peace and Coexistence
From the images of the Arab self, the novel comes with a new image of the Palestinian, who wishes to coexist with the other and builds bridges of peace despite the injustice and persecution he was subjected to. Elias, the Palestinian refugee whose mother gave birth to him under a pomegranate tree after his father’s martyrdom and was expelled from his town of Saffuriyya, and who did not complete his education due to the harsh conditions of life, asylum and displacement, worked forcibly like other refugees to construct houses built on their lands and the ruins of their homes for Jewish settlers; he looked at this scene as the most humiliating. "The country is ours, and we are just servants of the Jews
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 41". Nevertheless, he sympathized with the tragedy of the Jews who survived the Holocaust, distinguishing between a Jew and a Zionist, so he loved a Jewess and married her despite the opposition of his and her families. He had a son from her named Abraham to be a bridge of love and peace.
Because of his marriage to a Jewess, Elias lived as an outcast from his family, which indicates the difficulty of self-acceptance of human relations with the other in light of the bitter reality that he lives. Despite this, he saw that the future is for love and coexistence and a leap from the hatred and precipitations of the past, so he saw in the Oslo agreement a realization of the state of coexistence and the peace he lived with his Jewish wife
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 106, but their death was at the beginning of the Al-Aqsa intifada, which perhaps symbolized the end of happy dreams of peace, coexistence and an individual solution. Or, perhaps, it symbolized a peaceful solution that collapsed with the outbreak of the uprising.
4.3. The Image of the Palestinian Struggling for Freedom, Justice and Human Identity
As for the image of the Palestinian struggler, it appears through the character of Issa "Abu Saree," who was born in Bethlehem Al Jalila in the Carmel region, and moved to live in a refugee camp near Ramallah. He works in the canteen of Birzeit University. He is a progressive leftist intellectual, a prisoner released from the jails of the occupation, and an activist of the uprising, consistent with his intellectual identity. He believes that ethnic, religious, national and sectarian affiliations are not the basis, because they are false affiliations that conceal the common human identity of human beings. They cannot be abolished or ignored, provided they do not involve racism and are not at the expense of human affiliation. From this point of view, when he met Ibrahim at Birzeit University, he accepted that his mother was Jewish, "We are not backward or savage, and we are not a racist people
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 136".
Issa is biased towards justice and human identity, as he is not against the Jews per se, but he is against the occupier and is ready to fight all his life to overthrow the occupation state, liberate his country and restore the right to its owners. We are advocates of peace all over the world, but I do not link my life to the perdition and death of others
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 148. He was martyred in clashes with the occupation army during a demonstration in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in the occupation prisons
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 214.
4.4. The Palestinian between Dual Identity and the Struggle of Belonging
It appears that the protagonist and narrator of the novel, Ibrahim, is uncertain of identity; the Israeli citizenship was forcibly imposed on him like other Palestinians in the 1948-occupied part, as it is the fruit of a mixed marriage between an Arab Jew, whose identity is mixed with the blood of executioners and victims, his father is a refugee, and his mother is Jewish from a settlement built on the ruins of his father's town. Arabs call him Ibrahim and Abra by the Jews; everyone tries to pull him to his side, and he wants all those whom his heart loved, despite the seas of hatred and torment between them. His sister Anat, from his Jewish mother, is the secret of his reassurance and happiness, and the joy of his heart, which he finds only among the two Mariams (his Jewish and Arab grandmothers) who united in his consciousness despite the contradictions, differences and discrepancies between the two personalities. One of them is a settler that lives on the ruins of the other and takes over her time and place, while the other is a refugee who lives in the hope of returning to her home and land, realizing that it will not be achieved in the foreseeable future. He loves them in the heart as one person, and in the conscience, he favors the oppressed and does not accept the position of his Jewish grandmother who occupies the house of his Arab grandmother
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 101.
In his vision of resolving the conflict, he is theoretically aligned with the suggestion of his Jewish sister Anat, that Jews and Arabs live together
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 179, and he sees it as a suitable option that does justice to everyone and ends bitter conflicts. Ibrahim and the writer behind him seem to support the option of the secular state to resolve the conflict, but in other places in the novel, we see the writer’s support for what was stated by some of his other characters that restoring rights to their owners needs war, because what was taken by force can only be recovered by force… that the idea of coexistence the narrator's parents believe in is just an illusion; the talk about coexistence is denied by facts on the ground, and the peace agreement is just a celebration in the yard of the White House, which is an incomplete peace that will not restore rights to its owners
| [11] | Abu Hanish, K. (2019). Mariam Miriam. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. |
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p. 126.
6. Conclusion
1) Kamil's novel presented a diverse picture of the Jews and the Arabs according to the relationship between them in light of the development of the stages of the conflict, and according to the vision that the writer presents in his approach to the image of the ego and the other.
2) The images of the Jews ranged from negative to positive, far from their stereotypes or preconceived ideas that the author possesses about them. Rather, they were based on the relationship of hostility according to the Zionist persecution of the Palestinians, the occupation of the Palestinian land and displacement of its owners.
3) The study showed that Jews differed in their stance towards peace and coexistence with the Palestinian other. The Zionist Jews reject peace, and see that Palestine is their country and they liberated it from gentiles; indeed, they are calling for Greater Israel. Those who support peace and coexistence differ in the way of the solution. Some of them refuse to give up the land they have occupied, and do not accept the right of return. Rather, they suggest the return of some refugees, or their compensation. In other words, they want peace and coexistence between slave and master: the Jew is the master, and the Palestinian is the slave. Some of them propose the idea of coexistence and crossing the bridge from both sides within the framework of a secular state. All have rights and duties. This involves great risks, leading to the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.
4) The novel showed the human side in the lives of the Jews and the tragedies and persecution they were subjected to, and how they turned from victims to executioners, through their displacement of Palestinians and their seizure of their homes and land, and their refusal to abandon it in any way as a de facto in time, because they had their time and memories there, and at other times, under the pretext that it was the land of their forefathers and grandparents; they liberated it from the Palestinian the other who used to occupy it.
5) The study showed that the novel’s characters are preoccupied with the idea of conflict, solution, language, history and religion. In most cases, it seemed to be just speaking of ready-made intellectual speak from the writer’s tongue.
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