Fateful Triangle

Israel and Palestine: Historical Backgrounds254Justice upheld the government’s refusal to permit Najwa Makhoul, alecturer at the Hebrew University with a Phd degree from MIT, topublish an Arabic political-literary journal, citing undisclosed “securityreasons.”“The security of the state has silenced yet another Arab,” B. Michaelobserves, adding that Israeli intellectuals, professors, writers and poetshave nothing to say. The journal was “envisioned as a forum for seriousanalyses of Palestinian-Israeli society, as well as more general articleswritten [in] a Third World context…[with] a scientific, Marxist andfeminist perspective.” It would have been the only publication based inthe Galilee, where most Israeli Arabs live, and not connected with apolitical party, and would have provided jobs for Arab university graduates,no small problem in Israel. 138 This scandal was not reported in theU.S. to my knowledge, and at the time of writing has evoked no protest,though the facts have been known for many months to individuals andorganizations devoted to intellectual freedom throughout the world. The“security reasons” are no doubt comparable to those used by otherstates to prevent groups that are “marginal to the nation” (in MichaelWalzer’s phrase) from having an independent cultural and political life.As for the lack of interest here, that should be no more surprisingthan the fact that there is no protest when the well-known Palestinianpoet Mahmoud Darwish, invited to take part in a UNICEF poetryreading, is denied a visa under a section of immigration law that allowsthe State Department to bar people for certain ideological reasons”—asthe State Department confirmed. If an Israeli poet were denied entry tothe United States for “ideological reasons”—assuming this to bepossible—there would be no limits to the outrage and indignation, thecharges of a return of Nazism, etc. In this case, there is no response atall. Similarly, when Israeli censors banned the play “The Patriot” by theHebrew writer Hanoch Levin, there was considerable protest in Israel,Classics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky