This article was written in response to the violence that took place in Israel during the first two weeks of October 2000. The first phase of these events, from 1 to 6 October, was marked by massive demonstrations in Arab localities throughout Israel in sympathy with the second intifada; in the course of these demonstrations, thirteen unarmed Arab citizens were shot dead by Israeli security forces, a thousand were wounded, and hundreds were arrested. The second phase, from 7 to 15 October, involved vigilante actions by Jewish citizens against Arab citizens, including attacks on mosques, clinics, stores, and homes (see Docs. A5, C1, and D2 in JPS 118, and Docs. C4 and C5 in this issue.) In diagnostic rather than narrative mode, the piece analyzes Israel’s conduct during the events and their repercussions. Its thrust is that Israel’s measures reveal the hollowness of its democracy as far as its Arab citizens are concerned. It equally condemns the Israeli establishment (military and civilian), the Israeli Left, and the “Israelized Arabs” preoccupied with winning the approval of the Jewish majority. Among the main results of the October events, in the author’s view, are the reversal of the trend toward “integration” and the confirmation of the Arab national identity of Israel’s Arab citizens, an identity that is bound to be consolidated as Israel pursues its policies of separation in the occupied territories.

The Holocaust has become increasingly important in international historical culture, and the murder of six million Jews during the Second World War is arguably the ultimate symbol of evil in Western politics, culture and academia. This fact has had its consequences in the Arab world as well, even though the effects there have been significantly different than in the West. Traditional Arab public discourse has a history of feelings of superiority vis-à-vis the Jews, largely based on Muslim theology. The creation of the State of Israel and its repeated victories over Arab armies have kindled political resentment partly based in this tradition, which in turn has made it virtually impossible to assimilate the dominant Western understanding of the Holocaust into Arab public discourse. Instead, Arab public discourse on the Holocaust is highly politicized and almost always displays hostility toward Israel or Jews. Even though the Arab-Israeli conflict is a major motif in this hostile discourse, there is no saying whether a settling of the conflict would open Arab public discourse to the international understanding of the Holocaust and its universal messages of tolerance and anti-racism.

The article deals with the attitudes toward the Arabs in the Labor movement and especially in Mapai during the Arab revolt. The article argues that the ongoing war conditions compounded by an exacerbating and increasingly played up tendency to dehumanize and delegitimize Arabs in Palestine between 1936 and 1939. From a historical perspective the main influence of those years lays in the mental and psychological impact they had on perceptions in Mapai that determined the increasing distance between the two peoples for many years to come.

Using sources on everyday life of average citizens, the article shows that an Arab–Jewish hybrid identity already existed in Palestine in the late nineteenth century, prior to the introduction of Arab or Jewish national movements. Afterwards it competed with them over the loyalty of its original members. Arab–Jewish identity was part of Palestine’s modernizing order rather than its old one. It prevailed in joint neighborhoods, religious festivals, spoken languages, schools, and joint coffee shops. Unlike other Middle East Arab–Jewish communities, in Palestine it included both Ashkenazi Jews and a certain type of Zionist.