The Pessoptimist View of Post-Independence Isreal

James Davis

LMC 3202

11/11/2015

Dr. Marcus

The Pessoptimist View of Post-Independence Israel

        Saeed, the book’s main Pessoptimist, lives through the Israel’s war of independence in 1948, and subsequently is subjected to several ensuing infringements upon his, and his Arabic counterparts, basic civil rights. During this war of Independence, from whose loins the state of Israel was created, the newly established country systematically evicted a significant portion of its Arab residents. Men and women who had lived their entire lives within the confines of a village in the newly founded nation were suddenly and forcefully flung from their homes to regions outside of the Israel. It is during this war, on the date of December 11th 1948, that the ill-fated Pessoptimist hears a faint knock at his door. Upon opening, Saeed is confronted by a pale, feeble woman bearing news of an Israeli lineup in which, “they took, in a single operation, at least five hundred men and boys as prisoners of war.” (Habiby 56) This event is a direct reference to the Nakba, the name for the event in which over 700,000 Palestinians, by one means or another, were dislocated to regions outlying the nation of Israel.

        In the time after the Nakba, the remaining Palestinians feebly clung to the shattered remains of their lives, as they endured under heel of their Israeli counterparts. After the Nakba, Israelis had the right to search for ‘infiltrators’ in Palestinian homes at any hour of the night. These accursed ‘infiltrators’ were merely Arabs traveling without the explicit permission of the State, and any ‘infiltrator’ found in the domain of Israel was quickly escorted outside the dominion. Saeed is wary of any knock at his door, as “any knock.. would throw us from our bed in terror.” (Habiby 96) Though Saeed is only frightened the state would come to reposes his furniture, as the “Custodian of Enemy Property” would claim it is property of the state, many Arab homes were subjected to these random search and seizures. Many valuables were ‘repossessed’ and wrested from their original owners, who were left a receipt from the Custodian of Enemy Property who was kind enough to look after the property for the original owners (Habiby 94,95).

        In perhaps the most bothersome element of the novel, the Israeli point of view is able to successfully rationalize atrocities occurring under the new regime. The state of Israel, as portrayed by Habiby, follows the words of the ‘much famed’ author Jon Kimche, who in July 1950 “when our(the Jews) state was still learning to crawl” wrote “the Arabs waged a bloody war against the Jews. And they were defeated. So they have no right to complain when they are asked to pay the price for the defeat which they have suffered.” (Habiby 73) After the famed Munich massacre of 1972 in which eleven Israeli Olympians were held hostage and eventually murdered by the Palestinian group Black September, Habiby writes, “did our(Israel) military aircraft not ‘take revenge’ for us by murdering women and also children…?” (Habiby 73) This dialogue reveals the remorselessness Habiby’s Israel displays when interacting with the Arab populace of Israel. While the men, women, and children in the bombed refugee camps had nothing to do with the the slaying of the Olympians, Israel views the transgressions of a few Palestinians as a collusive act of aggression by Palestinians as a whole.

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