(2005-1906) מעבר לגדר: ײצוג הערבים בסיפורת העברית והישראלית (Barriers: The Representation of the Arab in Hebrew and Israeli Fiction [1906-2005].) (review)

Hebrew Studies 50 (2009) 423 Reviews (2005–1906) tylarCyhw tyrboh trwpysb Mybroh gwxyy :rdgl rbom. (Barriers: The Representation of the Arab in Hebrew and Israeli Fiction [1906–2005].) By Yochai Oppenheimer. Pp. 586. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2008. Paper, NIS 94. In this comprehensive and interesting book, Yochai Oppenheimer offers a rich account of Hebrew literature’s engagement with its Arab “other” throughout more than a hundred years of turbulent Arab-Jewish relations in Palestine and then Israel. The book follows Hebrew literature chronologically from early twentieth century to the present, carefully juxtaposing literature and history. It traces the ways in which literature responds to the dynamics of history but also delineates some persistent structures and tensions that shape Hebrew fiction all through the century surveyed. The valuable premise of the book is that both the changes and the consistencies in Hebrew literary representations of Arabs reveal more about Hebrew and Israeli culture and society than about the object of representation, the Arabs themselves. Oppenheimer’s work joins other recent studies (Peleg, Hochberg) in thoroughly considering the implications of Said’s seminal concept of Orientalism for thinking of Hebrew and Zionist culture, and this approach sets his project apart from earlier important wide-scale surveys of the topic at hand (Domb, Ramras-Rauch). The Saidian framework allows Oppenheimer to sensitively examine the intricate reciprocity between Hebrew literature and the political realm. Hebrew literary endeavors, the book shows, are both affected by the evolution of Arab-Jewish power relations in Palestine and Israel, and contribute to the solidification of these relations by providing them with a kind of cultural platform. The question that “haunts” the book, however, is to what extent Hebrew literature is able, at times, to offer a powerful critique of the political, that is, to undermine orientalist assumptions and propose “an alternative discourse about the Arabs” (p. 420). Such alternatives are rare and on the verge of inexistent in Hebrew literature, according to Oppenheimer, and while this seems very plausible, some of the critiques in the book are surprising. For anyone aware of Said’s theory, it seems clear how “anthropological” projects such as that of First Aliyah writer Moshe Smilansky’s in Sons of Arabia, which Oppenheimer thoroughly analyzes in the first chapter, would be orientalist in the sense that it postulates Arab society as a passive entity to be observed and studied by the European gaze of the Zionist settler. However, for Oppenheimer, even Mizrahi’s point of view of authors such as Yehuda Burla and Itzhak Shami sustain, at least to some extent, the orientalist distinction between the West as modern and enlightened and the Orient as primitive and dark. In the same way, at the other end of Zionist literary history and in the second half of the Hebrew Studies 50 (2009) 424 Reviews book, while it may be predictable that Amos Oz and A. B. Yhoshua, authors posited at the center of the Israeli canon, would not offer a real alternative discourse, Oppenheimer also traces the persistence of the national narrative in texts produced from marginal positions, such as the Mizrahi fiction of Shimon Ballas and Sami Michael, the feminist writing of Michal Govrin and Smadar Hartzfeld, and the works of Palestinian authors writing in Hebrew such as Anton Shamas. Even the undoubtedly radical writing of Itzhak Laor ends up, in Oppenheimer’s analysis, giving voice to its Israeli protagonists at the expense of the Palestinian “who continues to be silenced, mute, especially since so many characters represent his justice and are happy to speak for him” (p. 422). For anyone who writes within the Zionist space, even if their positions are post- or anti-Zionist, the orientalist framework, it seems, is inescapable. Although this argument is convincingly presented, more interesting for me were the ways which some of the author’s own readings complicate the overall conclusion that: “the representation does not break free from orientalist values and images, from typical plots that revolve around the tangible un-crossable border between Jews and Arabs” (p. 435). Oppenheimer’s discussions of Burla, Levy, Shamas, Laor, Matalon, and others suggest that even though literary representation may never “break free” from hegemonic discourse, it can...