Inextricably Bonded: Israeli Arab and Jewish Writers Re-Visioning Culture

Chapter 5. Israeli Arab Fiction and the Mainstream: Dissent and Strategies of Canonization

5 Israeli Arab Fiction and the Mainstream Dissent and Strategies of Canonization The Challenge of Hebrew and the Issue of Translation The phenomenon of Israeli Arab writers and their dissenting fiction1 presents the establishment with a specific issue of reception. In this case canonical appropriation or co-optation cannot, of course, root itself in a Jewish/Zionist brotherhood, as was the case with leftwing Zionist writers. Instead of Israeli Jewish texts that protest the oppression of the Arabs, the cultural establishment is presented with texts authored by the victims of this oppression. The works of these writers—Atallah Mansour, Emile Habiby, and Anton Shammas— are quite unsparing in their negative representations of Israeli domination . As we shall see, they denounce Zionism as an ideology of colonialist dispossession, charge Israel with bias and discrimination against its Arab minority, and expose the brutality of the conquest and the occupation. Narrated by victims, the exposure of the ruthless underside of the Zionist project is difficult to accept. At the same time, the decision of the Arab to write in Hebrew, the language of the hegemony, denies the possibility of evasion. Ineluctably, the Hebrew text confronts the Israeli mainstream with a twofold challenge. First, its subject matter presents the Jewish majority with the Arab minority’s perception of the moral failings of the Zionist project. Second, its Hebrew language dismantles the Zionist exclusionary claim to Hebrew culture. Yet, as 111 112 Dissenting Literatures and the Literary Canon this chapter demonstrates, neither the minority’s testimony of oppression nor its claim to Hebrew culture precluded the incorporation of this small but significant body of fiction into the Israeli literary canon. At this point one should note that despite the extent of criticism of the Zionist state in their writings, the three writers have for many years been highly respected and well known in mainstream cultural circles. Atallah Mansour is the author of the first Hebrew novel written by an Arab. In a New Light (1966) was favorably received and was soon translated into the English. Mansour has worked for many years at Ha’Aretz, the most respected Israeli newspaper, where he writes mainly on Arab issues in Israel. Anton Shammas, who now lives in the United States, worked as a journalist for prominent Israeli newspapers and literary magazines. He is a published poet both in Hebrew and Arabic, but it was the publication of Arabesques, his first novel, in 1986 that gained him instant fame in Israel. Shammas gained international recognition when, once his novel had been translated into English in 1988, it appeared among the best books of the year in the New York Times Book Review. Emile Habiby, an eminent politician and man of letters, has authored short stories and three novels. Originally published in Arabic, the novels—The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist (1974), Ikhtayyeh (1985) and Saraya, Daughter of the Ghoul (1991)—were translated into Hebrew by Shammas, who was Habiby’s very close friend. Habiby, who died in 1996, was a well-known, highly controversial political figure in both Arab and Jewish milieus. He was a founding member of the Israeli Communist party, a long-time Communist Knesset member, and editor-in-chief of Al-Ittihad, Israel’s leading Arab Communist weekly. Habiby wrote in Arabic, and his first novel, The Pessoptimist, made him famous throughout the Arab world. In 1990 in Cairo he was awarded the State of Palestine Certificate of Merit and the Medal of Jerusalem for Culture, Literature, and Art by Yassir Arafat, then chairman of the PLO. Two years later in Jerusalem , at an Independence Day celebration, he received the Israel Prize for literature from the Israeli minister of education and Israel’s prime minister. The awarding of Israel’s highest prize is incontrovertible evidence of Habiby’s canonical status on the Israeli cultural scene, even though there were many Israelis and Arabs who opposed Israeli Arab Fiction and the Mainstream 113 his nomination. Habiby’s acceptance of the Israel Prize gained him an almost unanimous condemnation from Arab intellectuals,2 quite vehement criticism from Israeli Arab intellectuals,3 and, on a more limited but no less hostile scale, a dramatic protest from Israeli rightwing politicians.4 These responses demonstrate the extent to which Habiby’s official acceptance in mainstream Israeli culture was politicized in both Arab and Israeli spheres. The following anecdote further elucidates the political significance of Habiby’s achievement in...