Seeking: Partners
The official title was: “Rethinking Generalizable Knowledge: A View from Below.” The small, emotional, succint subtitle was: A partners’ workshop. These were the headings under which we – academics and activists from Israel and abroad – convened for a four-day Israeli journey to learn about the challenges of shared living. Engagement with the question of shared living is not unusual in the local and global landscape, but our goal was to develop fresh thinking. We hoped to achieve it through bottom-to-top learning that recognized perspectives where the words “tolerance,” “diversity” and “shared living” did not signify a liberal world view.
The workshop excursions focused on three case studies: tensions between ultra-Orthodox Jews and other communities in Ashdod; the pride parade and its opponents in Jerusalem; and the struggle of the Bedouin community of al-Furaa in the Negev for recognition and rights. Each excursion included meetings with a range of local figures who agreed to share their perspectives with us. Although we asked to hear their positions and be exposed to their personal perspectives, it was clear both to them and to us that they were speaking as representatives of their community or group and not just as themselves. Yet everyone chose to begin the conversation with a personal life story.
I did not have the impression that any of them thought that their personal life story necessarily spoke for the group or reflected the nature of the society they lived in. I understood their rhetorical use of personal stories as a way to convey a message: the social reality they presented to us, the “outsiders,” was a direct result of an active choice to act, raise their voices and lead others to join them. Which is to say that the reality we see today, as challenging as it may look from the outside, is malleable. Even though many of the people we met were social entrepreneurs and/or community leaders, not a single one of them refered to themselves as an individual operating alone. They always saw themselves as part of a community. They worked with the community, for it and within it.
When is the personal not political?
I was even more struck by this idea when I listened to the painful words of Dr. Atef Abu Ajaj. We met on the last day of the workshop while visiting al-Furaa’s new school, which is merely a collection of air-conditioned caravans, with little kids running around between them in the sun, surrounded by devoted teachers full of a sense of mission. The contrast between the little school and Ben-Gurion University, where Dr. Abu Ajaj teaches, could hardly be starker. In his personal story, he frequently mentioned his daily commute from his home in Ksiefeh to Beersheva as a profoundly meaningful act for him. His drive home every evening was an experience of moving between parallel worlds, with all its challenges.
When he introduced himself, Dr. Abu Ajaj said: “I have two identity cards: the blue identity card of an Israeli citizen and a tribal identity card. I do not operate as an individual but as a member of a group.” These testimonies summarize his story: to realize his citizenship, with all the rights and obligations it entails, he is dependent on his relationship with the state of Israel. However, his relationship with the state, as a normative and law-abiding citizen, depends not only on him but is also shaped by the state’s relationship with the community in which he lives and where he raises his children.
Abu Ajaj told us about the weakening of the social structures in the community after its members’ attempt to integrate in a modern lifestyle, and about the weakening of the sovereign and authoritarian power of the traditional Bedouin leadership. He argued that the weakening of traditional leadership resulted from the fact that there are limits to what a leader can do to lead others, especially when material conditions for members of the community are not favorable. On the background of those internal changes, Abu Ajaj voiced his anger towards Israeli policy, which implements the law with “one foot in and one foot out,” thereby creating a leadership vacuum, he said.
The choice of a “law abiding” normative lifestyle, by residents whose relationship with the state is unclear due to their group identity, is more of a personal than a political choice. Not because it has no impact on the relationship between the Bedouin community and the state of Israel, but because the political framing was foisted upon them in the first place. No matter what kind of citizens they are, all of the residents of the unrecognized villages receive the same limited response to their needs. The “political” in this equation is a constant variable: the personal, the civic, can hardly affect it, if at all. Ksiefeh, which became a local council in 1996, is a good example and provides a mirror image of al-Furaa – a village that was officially recognized but whose recognition was never realized. The existence of urban infrastructures that allow life is not enough when neighbors suffer from their absence and violence racks the entire Negev, without distinguishing between different people and groups.
This narrative may provide an explanation for the reality we saw at al-Furaa, but it does not provide an excuse for not taking responsibility. At the same time it does not justify the rising delinquency, crime and violence. Between the interpretive perspective Abu Ajaj offered us and the realization of his vision – one of a thriving community, maintaining both its tribal and civic identities – yawns a gap Atef cannot bridge, neither as a member of the community, nor as a citizen, nor as a social researcher.
A tug of war
A day earlier the same gap that disturbed Abu Ajaj disturbed me as well during our meeting with Uri Banki in Jerusalem. After the murder of his daughter Shira by an ultra-Orthodox Jew at a Pride Parade in 2015, Banki made it his life's mission to repair the rift in Israeli society. He believes determined action against social polarization can prevent the next act of violence. The meeting with him was a kind of lesson in liberal democratic civics: Banki spoke about our personal responsibility to treat each other with tolerance and about our group responsibility. He said we are always dependent on others but at the same time also have influence on them.
After all, taking a political stance is like playing a game of tug of war: the harder we pull the rope from either end, the greater the risk of a rupture and separation. But if we let go all together we will no longer have an end to hold onto. Checks and balances, according to Banki, are not only for the government but are part of our shared living in a diverse democratic society. There will always be those who tend to act violently and do not shun away from using extreme measures to pull the rope in the direction they believe is right. Therefore we, the law-abiding citizens, must adopt political tolerance even towards groups with different or opposite positions from ours. Our responsibility is not only personal. It is also collective: each group must maintain the borders of its sector and discourage extremist individuals within it from using illegal means in its name or in its interest.
In the short time Banki spent talking to us he did not mention the power of political leadership but emphasized the power of the entire community to set itself moral and normative boundaries. Banki refuses to surrender to a culture in which polarization and violence are becoming more and more legitimate. Instead, he is doing all he can to educate, teach, and practice– as a liberal, secular atheist – tolerance towards others. He knows that his daughter's killer was one man. He believes an individual does not represent the group, even though nonetheless – such a person necessarily grows in a particular incubator. Banki insists on influencing that incubator, and the instrument he uses to do so is tolerant dialogue and strengthening the principles of liberal democracy from their foundations.
Banki’s activity indicates his theory of change: first one, then everyone. He starts from the premise that the more we break down the angry collective into an assortment of individuals, so we will find that the threat is less frightening than we thought; we will get to know each other and refuse to fight others to the end. After all, collective responsibility depends on personal responsibility. Those of us who refuse to accept violence or disobedience to the law must remember that if we move too far from the middle point and undermine the legitimacy of the encounter with the other, we might push those who stand behind us beyond the boundaries of law and morals.
Citizenship and communal responsibility
Uri Banki and Atef Abu Ajaj are normative, law-abiding citizens who became leaders under different life circumstances. The commonalities and differences between their stories are thought-provoking: although they both recognize that communities have their own inertia forces that leaders cannot always divert into a different direction, they are still trying as hard as they can to bring about that change, from different premises.
Banki views a community’s inertia as if it were a collection of individuals playing tug of war. Therefore, he is working steadfastly for civic education for personal responsibility. By doing so, he hopes to indirectly encourage groups to adopt the political tolerance that is necessary as a basis for shared living. Abu Ajaj, on the other hand, realized that his personal choice to be a responsible citizen was not enough to build a political community living at peace with itself and with other communities. In the relations between the Bedouin community and the state of Israel, citizenship – as an individual's position towards the state – has become a shaky, almost hollow political basis.
If we accept Banki’s argument that civic responsibility is the basis for shared living, and if we accept Abu Ajaj’s implication that the Bedouin community does not want to dissolve into an assortment of individuals as a condition for its admission as an equal political community among others, this leaves us with three questions: Can civic responsibility be realized even in communal terms? Can communities be expected to take responsibility as political collectives sharing a single space? And what is communal responsibility that is not based on liberal values?
Unlike Uri Banki’s and Atef Abu Ajaj’s life projects, I do not offer a vision or a call for action. All I wish to propose – to me, to you and even to them – is an opportunity to rethink the meaning of shared living in Israel in a reality of deep diversity that requires us to move beyond the boundaries of liberal imagination.
