10.

1177/1532708603251808
Cultural Studies
Bekerman
NeverFree
Critical
of Suspicion
Methodologies May 2003

ARTICLE

Never Free of Suspicion

Zvi Bekerman
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

In this article, the author reflects on the personal insights he gained while
involved in a 2-year research project at two bilingualPalestinian/
Jewishschools in Israel. The most salient characteristic of his venture
relates to the ongoing sense of suspicion he felt throughout his work. The
suspicion (of a civil sort) was shaped at many and different intersections. It
could be perceived in meeting with and between allteachers, parents,
children, and investigators. Not surprisingly, it invaded his most private
sphereshome, spouse, and past memories. Suspicion seemed to become
in those places shaded by national ideology that, in our modern world, is to
say all. The article is also a comment on some theoretical and methodological issues relevant to the social sciences today, in particular those dealing
with complexities such as identity and culture.

Keywords: peace education; intergroup encounters; conflict resolution; critical ethnography

For the past 2 years, I have been involved in a rather small evaluative research
effort supported by the Ford Foundation (Grant 990-1558) on two out of the
three existing bilingual schools in Israel. The purpose was to assess a variety of
school practices, mainly those connected to bilingual and bicultural education.
In a sense, it was a nice project that promised to further my knowledge on educational efforts toward coexistence in conflict-ridden areas.
I have finished writing my sections in the reports (Bekerman & Horenczyk,
2001, 2002) and have had time to publish a couple of papers (Bekerman, 2002,
in press; Beckerman & Horenczyk, in press). Im relatively happy with the outcome. I seem to have found a way, while approaching the enterprise critically,
to present a positive picture of an initiative worth supporting. With the report
finished, I have had time to reflect on the experience. Truth be told, I had
reflected on what was happening to me since the very first day I entered the
school in Misgav in the northern part of Israel but had found no outlet for my
reflections and considered them not to be relevant for a report to be read by
Authors Note: Gabriel Horenczyk from the School of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
conducted the research jointly with me, Aziz Haidar from the Truman Institute at the same university
was the Arab culture consultant to the project, and Nader Schade was our research assistant. I owe all a
profound debt for their friendship in dialogue though I hold none responsible for the views expressed in
this article. My gratitude is also extended to Vivienne Burstein for her insightful comments and editorial
work.
Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, Volume 3 Number 2, 2003 136-147
DOI: 10.1177/1532708603251808
2003 Sage Publications
136

Bekerman Never Free of Suspicion

foundations or any other interested shareholders. (I think they are wrong, but I
also consider the possibility that I might be wrong. I have also given up on reeducating the public to appreciate subjectivity as much as they appreciate subjective objectivity.) My reflections focus on suspicion or should I say suspicions
that emerge in multiple, ethnic, professional, and social intersections, albeit
while trying, hard and with suspicion, to sustain a critical eye on all sides.
Before going into the intricacies I bumped into and the consideration they
elicited, some biographical notes are in place. I was born in Argentina in 1950,
came to Israel in 1967, and since 1995 have worked full-time at the School of
Education of the Hebrew University. Im a Jew and have been somewhat
trained as an educational anthropologist: Im pretty well read in a variety of
critical, dialogical, and sociohistorical approaches, and I believe that my 50
years have helped me develop into a rather good human being.
That we all play on stages we have not built must already be the agreed
knowledge of many. That our words do not belong to us but instead we seem to
belong to them must be another. And still look at the choices, Argentinean,
Israeli Jew. Nobody is hanging over my head threatening to shoot me. I could
have chosen not to use national/religious/ethnic categories. I could have chosen multiple creative ways to introduce myself. I could have said something
about my eyes being blue, something about my daughters. But I havent.
Partially, I know the choices I made were made because of what will come later
but also because of the setting within which Im writing.
Israel is not an easy country in which to live. Those who reside within its
physical borders are continually defined and confined by national, religious,
and ethnic boundaries. Although arguably imaginary, these boundaries
become painfully real in Israel. People and circumstance are perpetually occupied with the work of marking them. Even in those rare instances when steps
are taken to reinterpret the meaning of differences, there seems to be an unwritten rule that states that to transcend painful boundaries one must first affirm
them, thereby jeopardizing the healing process. Indeed, in Israel there seems to
be no way out. You are always a national, religious, or ethnic something and
you stick, or are stuck, to it.
So here I was, an Israeli, Hebrew-speaking Jew doing research in a school
that included both Palestinian and Jewish children, Jewish and Palestinian parents, Palestinian and Jewish teachers, and Jewish and Palestinian coprincipals.
If you want an insight into the very basic ideology that directed the schools
efforts, look back to the last sentence. Pay attention to the change in order
between Palestinian and Jew/Jew and Palestinian and start becoming
acquainted with sensitivities I have become socialized into in the 2 years of my
research and still think about thinking on having to start any next sentence
with the opposite order (Palestinian would come first this next time). As if anyone would pay attention to these little subtleties. Some do.
Symmetry and equality were the keywords of the educational enterprise. And
I never made up my mind if I had accepted the rules out of true cross-cultural

137

138

Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies May 2003

sensitivity or just not to let anyone ever call me a fake. I do think words are
important, but I know theories on languaging and games well enough to recognize that meanings can always be twisted in the next turn.
An Israeli Jew (the Argentinean was irrelevant for the research eventsfor
the most part), I thought, had to think, if to legitimatize his work, that he had
to share power with Palestinian researchers in such an enterprise. Cultures and
their meanings had to be bridgedthat was clear. And cultures are carried by
and in languagesand even an Arabic-speaking Israeli Jew could not have
managed the research by herself or himself. Arabs are Arabs and Jews are Jews,
and no theoretical pirouettes will allow you to justify to any interested party
that false national consciousnesses and national languages have subjugated us
all. So, both a Palestinian consultant and a Palestinian research coordinator
who would contribute and legitimize the work were included in the project.
This last sentence might give you the wrong idea that it was clear to me from the
start that I could manage all by myself. That was not the issue. I realized in
advance that language would be a barrier at times (though all Palestinians in
Israel are rather fluent in Hebrewif they werent, their lives would be much
more miserable than what they are today). I realized as well that some behaviors
would be in need of explanation. What really bothered me was that when
accepting the need for translators of sorts, I was also giving in to a view that reified language and one that I could notbecause of my own experienceagree
to. I kept asking myself which languages are coming onboard.
The Palestinian consultant brought in his histories and theories; so did the
Palestinian research coordinator. I had my own languaging imbued in, you
have it, the military oppression in Argentina, my English private school also in
Argentina, my own sense of minority, my immigrant Hebrew, and my own theories. And I asked myself what languages I thought I would have to understand.
Was it the parents Arabic, and if so, which one? The one of the Jerusalemite
who worked for the municipality as a trash collector or the Sachnin physician
trained in Spain with whom I could share my hatred for dictatorship in my
mother tongue (surely with some translation as wellSpanish is not the same
across Spain or across the ocean)? Was it the teachers Arabic or the childrens
Arabicthe one least hybrid because their young ages had not yet let them be
fully socialized into the Hebrew environment, which characterizes even the
most authentic Israeli Palestinian villages (the ones that were left after the
Naqba)? I had no solution to my queries. Not to speak of the possibility of falling into the trap that only Arabic speakers were my problem. I knew too well
Ortega y Gassets maxim on language being both exuberant and deficient. I
knew Hebrew also had to be translated to be understood. But Hebrew was not
an issue in a research project under ideological rather than theoretical suspicion. I had some faith in some basic human commonalities (a dangerous faith if
treated as secure). I thought we could develop a relationship that would allow
for dialogue and consensus with all researchers and participants and then hope
for the best. In the long run, I realized hoping for the best was not good enough;

Bekerman Never Free of Suspicion

suspicion (or better suspicions) was to be found at every step. Thats exactly
what I did.
I have already stated that Im happy with the product, but this means little
when considering meaning shaping. Its hard to have no place from where to
look and be able to say I had understood. In general, I know as well that there is
nothing to be understoodthat understanding has more to do with the possibility of sustaining a next turn in a conversation than with any fact of the
past. Understanding becomes an unfinished process, always on its way somewhere, at times risky and at others sheltered, but always unfinished. And yet the
report was finished and submitted, and I write this article asking myself what
can be achieved by a report that ultimately does not reflect the very basic premises its author sustains. I have learned to bridge some understanding with colleagues in my, and nearby, theoretical surroundings. I have found words to
attack and defend my views with less sympathetic academic characters. But I
still do not know how to write saying trust me in spite of my having little faith
in what we all have come to believe is the authorial language of science.
Coming into school for the first time was excitinga new adventure with its
new worries. I was there early in the morning before anyone else had arrived. I
wanted, as if it were possible, to catch the beginning. I knew only gods have
had that opportunity, and I realized how immodest and ridiculous was my
expectation. Still, for the 2 years, I arrived before anyone else. The first time
was special. I had enough time to take notes on the school building, the yard,
the classrooms; later, I realized once again that the limits of context are left
unannounced. Contextual relevance could have started before, long before, in
Jerusalem: the city, the most symbolic site of conflict, without any good reason
other than that we all seem to agree that it was. Indeed, it is a powerful statement about the uselessness of reasoning and the power of unreasoned coherence. And what about the outer limit of Sachnin, with the neighboring Rafael
military industry that has grown at the expense of the Palestinian village, and
Misgav, the outskirts of the Zionist enterprise of Judaizing the northern part of
Israel? Ultimately, Jerusalem and Rafael and Sachnin and Misgav made it into
the report under the category of political issuesa shallow though powerful
category that did not reflect particular human attachments or needs. Im still
left with the sense that I might not have studied two schools but rather one
complex system.
I kept giving in to national ideology. I had also been fashioned by the powerful machinery developed by the nation-state, in the form of massive educational efforts that market universal (anonymous) literacy. I was a successful
product of that which was made to be seen by detailed practices as natural or
banal. I had a flattened sense of identity and individuality measured against a
contingent other. How could it be different? The whole world was organized
according to this view, and nationalism is indeed still the most powerful ideology on earth. For a while, I had tried to overcome this limitation. This put me
under continuous suspicion. From within, Jews asked if it were at all possible or

139

140

Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies May 2003

necessary to overcome nationalism or, when liberal, told me I would do better

to think on how to change the system from within (I have not yet made up my
mind if they are ignorant or malintentioned). From outside (why outside? outside of what?), Palestinians threatened to accuse me of looking for new ways to
subdue them while I kept enjoying the freedom (apparent) of being a citizen in
a state I could call my own, something they clearly could not. Language and
ideology made me suspicious in the eyes of all others; my own training made me
suspicious in my own.
Early morning at the school, some kids arrive first; they look at me curiously
but go on with their doings as if not paying too much attention to my presence:
an Argentinean Jewish new immigrant to Israel. My Argentinean blood,
there is no such thing, is Polish from my fathers side, there is no such thing
either, and Russian from my mothers side, again no such thing. To make things
worse, or better, my mothers mother came with the Baron Hirsh, at age 2, to
settle the Jewish colonies in northern Argentinarefuge and solace from Russian pogroms, initiated by Russian masses incited by the czars policies, not
benevolent enough to any people let alone to poor peasants. The Argentine is a
big land still in the periphery, cleansed of anything that could taste native or
Black by a dedicated army of ruthless European descendents.
In that Argentina, I was raised by what seemed to be a liberal father who I
knew sinned in being too proud of his Ashkenazy Polish Jewish descent and his
low disgust for Sefardic Jews. Other than that, he indeed cared about his workers at the small industry he owned and about the non-Jewish Polish rebels who
had resisted the Germans during the Second World War, for whom he had built
a social club where they could practice memory.
I could praise myself for having adopted liberal outlooks. I knew too little to
hate anyone, and what surrounded me was too similar for me to realize if, at all,
I could be sympathetic to difference. When coming to Israel, I sojourned for a
while at a kibbutz, the true expression of Ashkenazy hegemony, and later at the
university where a just stratifying system had made sure that only few
Sefardic Jews can study, to say nothing of a much lower percentage of Arabs.
Academic studies had furthered my liberal postures, and I had grown to express
leftist critical views about the regions politics. I had become so intelligent, I
could even work at deconstructing my own critical views.
The kids played in the yard, waiting for the bell to ring. Not all played soccer. They played in separate groups, and I knew that Jews played separate from
Palestinians. I thought I was better. I thought I could not recognize Palestinian, but it seemed I could. I could and I couldnt. I think what I could recognize
was more European and non-European, or lighter and darker tones, as if indeed
migration had not been part of the world for thousands of years. Lighter and
darker proved, luckily, not to be good enough. It was becoming apparent that
Palestinian and Sefardic resembled one another. But lighter Palestinians resembled Ashenazi Jews, and you had the transgressors, those whose tone modalities
were borderline and confused the world, once again. Skin tone would not take

Bekerman Never Free of Suspicion

me too far; language and accentuation became later markers I could hold to. I
knew the problem was looking for the differences. I had differences in mind,
and I was looking for them in the world. Not surprisingly, I could find them.
Years ago, Ethiopian Jews immigrated to Israel. The rhetoric that accompanied their arrival was full with never again sorts of declarations. The system
wanted to absorb them into society without putting them through the European melting pot that had characterized North African (Jewish Sefardic) immigrant absorption in the 1950s and 1960s. Of course, it did not work, and Israel
was left with open racism. Knowing black was light reflection, by itself meaningless (not that anything can have meaning by itself ), I had worked hard not to
see black; I thought I had made some progress.
After visiting the school a couple of times, I arrived one morning to find I
had been christened. I had become, in the words of my new young friends, the
one who asks funny questions. It sounded bad for theoretical reasons, but I
knew they liked me when they ran to hug me, calling out my new name that
morning. I was shocked by my reaction. Hugging the two Jewish children back
was rather easy. A kinetic retreat, one of those that could send into recession any
schizophrenic, characterized my reaction to the other two Palestinian children
(by the way, one of them a bright blond Christian Palestinian, a member of a
minority himself, or is it in Jewish Israel a double minority?). Still, I was able to
hug them and hoped my bodily reaction would go unnoticed (Ill never know;
we became friendly throughout the 2 years, and Ive learned to hug them with
ease by now).
What I had finally experienced was that racism was not in mind but in body.
Maybe racism is too harsh a word. I allowed myself to be hesitant when coming
in contact with what, according to my protocols on cleanliness, seemed to be
less clean (usually economically disadvantaged people seemed to fit the
descriptionthe poor and beggars whom fortunately I have had little opportunity to meet). The Palestinian kids did not fully fit this description. What
could have triggered my reaction? I had indeed, after 32 years in Israel, become
a closet Israeli Jewish bigot. Nationalism had taken its prey, again.
Was this recognition good for my attempts at understanding the world of
the schools I was researching? Confronting my newly uncovered sensibilities
made me feel better. I was now at least sustaining an open dialogue with myself.
I was a racist and I knew it. I could rationalize further and say that the racism I
had found was remnants of early bodily racism and that because I had worked
hard for years at cognitively overcoming it through study and conversation, I
was well on my way out of further problems. No rationalization freed me from
my worrybut worry of what? Not being objective? I had known for long that
there is no such thing as looking from nowhere. So maybe it was that I thought
there were more and less good places from which to observe. The solution was
keeping an open dialogue. With whom to dialogue was the next question.
My spouse was a good choice. With my spouse, I shared three, wonderfully
alike and different daughters. She was born in Israel to Iraqi and Greek parents

141

142

Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies May 2003

(Israel is indeed an imagined community). That makes her an Israeli Jew but of
the Sefardic sortno easy thing to be in a country that dreams of playing soccer
and basketball only in the European leagues. Her father, an intelligent chap,
realized quietly what was going on. He pushed all his kids through the educational system and succeeded in positioning them relatively well within the Jewish Israeli structure. Success had its price. The price, not readily acknowledged,
had to do with a sense of discomfort with whatever had to do with Sefardic
sounds, colors, behaviors, proximity, and much more. Sefardic Jews were not
the first aspired dreams of our national heroes; they were a default option after
the Holocaust erased the Ashkenazi preference. Sefardic Jews naturally dislike the Arabs. Some say their place in society can only be sustained if Palestinians keep holding the bottom. Elites seem always in need of someone to step
on. My wife was under suspicion.
We have grown together for many years now. We have changed one to the
side of the other. She teaches at primary school. She works two jobs and gets
paid only for one. Im more lucky; I also work at two jobs and get recognition in
both of them. Today, all her students (male and female alike) spend their time
correcting sexist math and language books, adding the female endings to
whichever word in Hebrew allows for it (the sexist books are all authorized by
the Ministry of Education in our enlightened country). Changes, quiet
changes, have occurred in her life all along. Only recently has she come to state
them openly, a welcomed but not surprising development. Regarding Arabs,
she is still ambivalent. She has always thought of me as an extreme leftist (only a
somewhat born rightist could think of me as in the extreme). When I tell her
my stories of the bilingual school, my sense of amazement, pride, and agitation
when seeing both the Naqbe day (Arab memorial of the tragic 1948 Zionist
success) and the independence and memorial days (of Israel and its armed
forces) equally accounted for and commemorated in the schools, she discards
them as sensibilities that might have no place and no future. As if saying
nature did not mean things to be this way. Im under suspicion. She is not sure
I understand the world well enough to be able to judge reality.
At the same time, her political views have changed. She believes we need to
find a solution for the Palestinian people and is sick of politicians who, though
in opposite parties, speak the same language and make the same errors. She is
still very upset when I compare what Palestinian Israelis suffer with the suffering of Sefardic Jews in Israel, but even in this messy subject, she seems to be
more accepting. Seeing her work at her school, theorizing about human equality and how systems fail what otherwise would be successful children, I sense
that very soon we might be talking an ever more shared meaning, though still
translations will be required in spite of us both speaking Hebrew (luckily our
partnership is not being researched; thus, we are not subject to the expectation
of appointing a language consultant).
With her, there is little place for my confusion. I was lucky my daughters
were old enough for me not to have to consider registering them in a bilingual

Bekerman Never Free of Suspicion

school. To judge from the past, my spouse would have opposed it, and I would
have agreed under protest. She has always offered, with her behavior, easy ways
out from my own ambivalence; I could have stayed a bigot and dump it on her.
So, now Im again under my own suspicion.
What exactly was confusing me was confusing in itself. I was afraid I would
not be able to see. But to see what? Because of my theoretical training, I wanted
to uncover how Palestinians and Jews get done. I knew they could only be
constructs, and I wanted to get a good look at how they were worked at. The
school turned out to be a very difficult place at which to look at this work. The
basic premises of those who had created it made the issue difficult. They had
created an educational environment that purposely, from the start and
throughout, categorized people not by constructing them but by preventing
even the most minute attempt to dismantle even the tiniest brick of their identity. As in Israel, at school (no surprise, even the best intentioned educational
settings seem to replicate their surroundings) a Jew is a Jew and a Palestinian is a
Palestinian, even when some might be Armenian (counted at school, in the
administrative game of symmetry, as Palestinians, as are other products of love
at the borderswhile crossing them).
Talking to parents, I had the sense they disagreed, but I could not say so. It
would make me suspicious that I was betraying them. Palestinian parents
risked losing the respect of their communities for sending their children to
school. They were under suspicion, too, just for sending their kids willingly to a
Jewish school in a Jewish settlement. But what else could they do? Righteous
Israel had made sure the educational options open to them, within the regular,
segregated Arab education in Israel, were inappropriate enough for upwardly
mobile Palestinian parents not to want their children to go there. A low percentage of success was the best they could expect in the regular system, and if
they wanted their kids to go on to university, they needed to make sure they help
them by joining an educational initiative that offered excellenceexcellence
both at levels of academic achievement and at two other types of excellence.
They wanted their children to speak Hebrew without an Arabic accentuation
and to know it well enough as a mother tongue so as to make sure their children
will not suffer as they had when joining any of the Israeli academic institutions.
They wished also for their children to gain a little (a lot) of what they identified
as that which accounted for Jewish Israeli kids success, thats to say, self-confidence. What was fascinating from my perspective was that I had a sense that
what they wanted was that their kids join the modern world. But in complex
Israel, there is little place for an unaffected modern world. All is a national issue
and will stay that way. Thus, they seemed to be rightfully under suspicion for
wanting their kids to be too Jewish. National sensitivities exact a high price;
they allow for no natural parental feelings of wishing their kids to partake in a
better lot. Any step in this direction is a betrayal. A double one. The first is for
taking steps easily interpreted as abandoning their national identity, and the
other is for abandoning their religious tradition of old. Fundamentalism, that

143

144

Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies May 2003

great invention of the modern West, is indeed an outgrowth of national

ideologies.
I also sensed they did not care as much as Palestinian rhetoric dictates about
some national issues that seemed to be central to school ideology. I was not able
to say this openly in the interviews. Suspicion threatened me at every step. One
of the easiest ways to overcome a difficult question could be an innuendo that
the questioner was partial too. I tried at times to voice my doubts, but usually
the answer I got ended back in a declaration on the importance of strengthening national identity as well as coexistence. But raising my doubts through
questions was my own way of being suspicious of the interviewees. Being a
minority must indeed be difficult, having always to hide even the most natural
instincts toward the well-being of your children. National identity was indeed
powerful, so much so that it was able to stop such natural instincts from
developing openly. Needless to say, their willingness to have their kids speak
perfect Hebrew also left me questioning which type of Arabic the researcher
should know. I asked myself as well why it was that I never pushed my own
understandings of the situation far enough in the interviews. Well, for one,
there was the possibility that I would damage the good relations I had developed; then there was the danger that my research could be tinted (too much) by
my anti-nation-state ideology, and so forth. I have not found a solution, yet.
There is no way out from my problem, I think, and no way of writing a report
and explaining this other than my short attempt here while trying to write, in
the words of honorable academic journals, a nonfiction story. But stories are
not yet the stuff of well-accepted reports that will grow into new funding.
And then there were the Jews, the ones who in the Jerusalem school pulled
their children out from second grade. These, as others who have stayed, send
their kids in order to feel better. They send them also because, being likewise
upwardly mobile, they want their kids to go to experimental, particularistic,
and possible fashionable educational initiatives. These parents, being center
left and more (at times), want to express, courageously, their ideologies in their
deeds. But between ideologies and practices there is a gap, and confronting the
gap is not simple. Easy is to say that you support equal representation. Easy is to
say you want full recognition for the Other. But when you realize recognition
involves tilting the scale to the Others side, you realize as well you are not really
ready for this. They, like me, were racists and not yet ready to admit it. This last
statement must sound arrogant; a true to science scientist should never sound
it. I was always suspicious of the Jews. Still, it was these Jews who took the step I
would so easily have allowed my spouse to debarsending my kids to a Palestinian-Jewish school.
The parents who, at the end of my 2nd year in the research, pulled their kids
out from second grade were openly suspicious of the Palestinians and the
nongovernmental organization that initiated the program. It was clear to them
that a political as opposed to an educational agenda (as if they ever could be separated) is what guided these others. They thought both wanted to overcome the

Bekerman Never Free of Suspicion

Jewish home and to do it at the expense of their innocent young children. The
Palestinian parents had no suspicions whatsoever; they were sure their departing Jewish counterparts were plain racists. Suspicions as phenomena could not
be kept a tidy and symmetrical phenomenon.
The children, as they all are, were astonishing. Regardless of their academic
achievements, they were all smart, very smart. They owned multiple languages,
symbolic and representational. This does not mean that Jews could speak
Arabic; for the most part, they could not in spite of the efforts invested by all
the faculty. Not having a supportive context for Arabic, even in a northern area
with a Palestinian majority, Arabic remained that which out of class could not
be remembered. Palestinian kids were pretty fluent in both languages and
would only get better. For the most part, kids got along together, and when not,
it had to do more with internal than with international conflicts. They could
speak about coexistence and differences, at times, and differentiate between
Palestinian and Jews in school, the good ones, and Jews and Palestinians on the
outside, those responsible for the mess. For the national memorial days, they
could draw in different languages; the Palestinian inspiration came from
national and battle themes, flags, tanks, and other military paraphernalia. In
these drawings, always and rightfully so, the Jews were the villain. Jews preferences stayed with the rights of the majority. Their inspiration came from the
language of peace and coexistence so useful to the majority even when they
might not really mean it. When playing in the yard, the language of suspicion
would appear in the game arrangements: Soccer was for the Palestinians, and
playing catch was for the Jews. And then, at times in intimate encounters with
the researchers questions, the Palestinian kids would acknowledge that not all
Jewish kids love us. Are there ever kids? Or are we all grown-ups from the
start?
Last were the teacherscommitted teachers, trailing in unknown territories. At first, the Palestinians were thankful for the opportunity. Palestinian
teachers (always tools in the hands of the sovereign, like many other teachers in
many other nation-states) have become the true guardians of national ideology.
As time passes, it becomes apparent that they have ever-growing expectations
to give what in their eyes is proper expression to their national identity. Palestinian teachers are suspicious of the soft approach implemented by Palestinian
parents to all national issues at school. Palestinian parents fear the teachers
activism might endanger the initiative and are suspicious of them. Jewish
teachers have reacted with surprise and at times with a sense of danger. At first
they were happy to consider themselves true liberals willing to open up their
doors to those oppressed; now, they had to encounter their own misconceptions and examine their own fears. Palestinians were asking for more than what
they expected to have to give from the start.
On the last Soldiers Memorial Day (the day in which Zionist Israel commemorates the death of those who have sacrificed their lives fighting, free of
charge, for the state to become), suspicion reached its peak. I was asked by one

145

146

Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies May 2003

of the Jewish teachers if, in the separate Naqbe Memorial ceremony held for the
Palestinian cohort, the teachers had exposed the Palestinian flag. They indeed
had, but for the first time in 2 years, I felt I could not reveal thisI think that
my mumbling an answer further raised their suspicion.
The events of September 11 caught me in the Ezeiza airport (Buenos Aires)
where I was waiting to catch a plane (needless to say from a proud and bankrupt
national airline) that would bring me home (?) to Israel. I heard my name being
called over the loudspeakers in the comfortable waiting rooma room whose
mood borders the national and international, a place where the jet generation
(but not the new slave generation of migrant laborers) can put differences to
rest. The polite attendants asked me not to fly that morning. It was indicated
that the Israeli skies had been closed, and I would not be able to reach my destination. My response was expectedI indicated I was first flying to Milan and
that it was none of their business if I got stuck in Malpensa. I made it there
while thinking about what could have happened. Was it Iraq again with its missiles? Approximately 14 hours later in Italy waiting for the skies to open and
watching CNN (the device for global integration), I realized what had happened. Almost as many had died as in Israels war of independence. Since
then, many more had died, and in the past months many are still dying in Israel
and Palestine. Had I become insensitive? Sensing too much death had made
death and sense become banal and able to feed nationalism. With some horror,
I admit that like many others, I asked myself, How do they feel now that it has
happened to them (a great elocutionary addition to we and uswe need more
than two to tango and dialogue)? Of course, soon remorse and other issues
came to mind. Possible reactions in a complex world of unforeseeable feedback,
in the hands of all but more so in the hands of arrogant national leaders, were
indeed something to worry about. For weeks now, I have followed the game of
ethnic/religious/national rhetorics, and Im becoming suspicious again. I think
I understand. America is not on a crusade, Islam is not an enemy, and not even
Afghanistan is a foe, though they will unfortunately sufferthey meaning the
underprivileged and deprived (even soldiers for the most part join armies
because of economic pragmatics and not ideology). Incredible symmetries. In
Israel, both politically correct Jews and Palestinians try never to generalize publicly. There are no Jews, no Moslems, no Christians. There are only some bad
elements in all of these societies. But all suffer, principally the poor and the
unprivileged. I question my sense of rediscovering the roots of my own discourse, the one I was fed, when still young and arriving in Israel, by wellintended Westerners enrooted in the imperial, the colonial, and the national.
Racism is unthinkable to the national liberal humanist. The new multicultural
rhetoric offers recognition, always cheaper than response-ability. Free of the
suspicion of racism, the powerful can continue their daily business, the weak as
well, the ones bomb, the others die, and good nations will set us free.
Suspicion seems to be everywhere. But is it? No! What is fascinating about
suspicion is that it shapes at intersections shaded by national needs (even when

Bekerman Never Free of Suspicion

no politicians or officials are present). I ask myself if it is not nationalism that

should be suspected of nourishing suspicion so as to survive. If this is so, what
type of education should we develop so as to shape a humanity suspicious of
national suspicion? I fear that if we do not find a way, even courageous initiatives like the ones that prompted my writing this nonfiction story might not
hold. Pity.
References
Bekerman, Z. (2002). Can education contribute to coexistence and reconciliation? Religious
and national ceremonies in bilingual Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 8(3), 259-276.
Bekerman, Z. (in press). Reshaping conflict through school ceremonial events in Israeli Palestinian-Jewish co-education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly.
Bekerman, Z., & Horenczyk, G. (2001). Arab-Jewish bilingual co-education in Israel: A longterm approach to inter-group conflict resolution. Retrieved from http://sites.huji.ac.il/
melton/bekermanhorenzcyk-jsi-f.pdf
Bekerman, Z., & Horenczyk, G. (2002). Bilingual education in Israel. Retrieved from http://
sites.huji.ac.il/melton/Bilingual-11-01.pdf
Bekerman, Z., & Horenczyk, G. (in press). Arab-Jewish bilingual co-education in Israel: A
long-term approach to inter-group conflict resolution. Journal of Social Issues.

Zvi Bekerman teaches anthropology of education at the School of Education

and the Melton Center for Jewish Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
His main interests are in the study of cultural, ethnic, and national identity,
including identity processes and negotiation during intercultural encounters
and in informal learning contexts. He has also recently become involved in the
study of identity construction and development in educational computermediated environments.

147