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A Doctor in Galilee: The Life and Struggle
of a Palestinian in Israel
By Hatim Kanaaneh,
A Book Review By Jim Miles
Pluto Press, London/Ann Arbor, 2008.
ccun.org, August 28, 2008
“A Doctor in Galilee” is a wonderfully descriptive narrative of life
and times in Palestine/Israel. Clearly written, with a mix of
personal anecdotes, historical tales, and much in the way of a
reality based philosophy of a people living under an occupying force
that treats them distinctly as a lesser ‘other’. The emotional
impact is powerful as Hatim Kana'aneh uses basic descriptors to
transport the reader into a world consisting of family, friends,
hope and persistence on one side, and racism, prejudice,
discrimination, manipulation, and apartheid on the other.
Hatim Kana'aneh is now a retired Doctor, a profession that through
his work liaisons with the Israeli Health Ministry provides a deeper
and more personal look at the more subtle manipulations and racism
that underlie the overt acts of land confiscation, road blocks, and
military occupation that the usual narratives concentrate on.
It is hard to put the book into one theme, one word, as the author
best defines his own theme:
The major theme of the book revolves around the politics of
dispossession and the nature of Israel’s majority-minority
‘coexistence’ as it plays out in the life of Arrabeh and similar
communities and as experienced and recorded by me in real time.
More specifically, he defines the work as a struggle over land,
which underlies all aspects of the conflict between the two groups
that people my two realities.
Kana'aneh does not dwell on the physical atrocities of war, of the
intifadas, of the Nakba although they are by necessity part of the
narrative. He remains true to his thematic description
in defining the social ‘norms’ that regulate the ‘coexistence’ of
unequal partners. But more so than with other narratives I
have read is the ‘after-the-read’ sense of family, of life, of
belonging, of the love for both land and family, beautifully
expressed in his metaphorical yet realistic description of his
transplanting of an ancient olive tree to his own yard.
Even without the tales of war there is ample misery spread among the
Palestinian population that struggles to survive the rules and
regulations of the Israeli system, a system that at its base simply
wants the Palestinians to be gone. From that arises stories of
neglect, double standards, bureaucracy, and personal intimidation
and humiliation that is daily fare along with the more overt
physical atrocities.
Indirectly, those bureaucratic rules and double standards are
expressed physically. Throughout his story, and especially
from his medical background, is the underlying idea of the lack of
health facilities for the Palestinian people, from the simple lack
of piped clean water causing multiple medical problems, lack of food
leading to starvation and stunted growth, to the problems of access
to hospitals and medicines for those in need. These issues
culminate in his most strongly worded chapter “Genocide, here and
there.”
The interactions with his Israeli medical colleagues reveals “the
emotional schizophrenia of our daily lives”, dissociating “the
individuals we work with from the collective action of the state”,
yet ultimately realizing that they too are guilty of the state’s
actions. Throughout the work are descriptions of medical
happenings clearly demonstrating the Israeli intent to punish or
diminish the lives and livelihood of the Palestinian people.
More dramatically, his brother Sharif defines Israel’s bottom line
as “the physical elimination of Palestine, period.”
Kana'aneh’s “most awful realization” is that he is living “in a
country where my government, the system I am employed by, initiates,
sponsors and promotes genocide against my people.” This idea
is repeated during the first Iraq war when movement was severely
restricted resulting in “mass starvation amounting to genocide in
the Palestinian occupied territories.”
Along with health, the other major socially disruptive factor is the
education system, poorly funded, lacking basic necessities of
teaching (by my standards anyway), and with teachers that are more
than likely both poorly qualified and under the manipulative control
of the Shin Bet, the Israeli security system. The use of the
Shin Bet is validated as “security considerations” by Education
Minister Limor Livnar. In spite of all this, many Palestinians have
succeeded in achieving much more than the Israelis ever allowed for
them, or ever believed in their own brainwashed way that the
Palestinians were capable of achieving. On the other hand, the
‘education’ system is slowly destroying the culture, the remembered
villages and lands of the elders being lost to the memories of the
younger generation, with the result for the author that “it saddens
me and leaves a vague bitter taste of defeat and guilt.”
Racism is encountered throughout the tales, as one would expect from
a system of apartheid that desires the elimination in one way or
another of the ‘other’. Kana'aneh’s stories remind me of similar
events recorded from the American history of racism against
African-Americans: the “fake humanitarianism” of those in
control, the “assumption that Arab labor is worthless and
intrinsically defective”, a position sarcastically adopted by the
Palestinian workers themselves; the many laws that create a
Byzantine labyrinth of rules, regulations, and agencies making an
opaque wall to Palestinian endeavours; and the strange ‘pat-downs’
by Israeli security that “under normal circumstances…would be
grounds for bringing charges…of sexual molestation, because the
touching was quite uninhibited and the stroking extensive and
repetitive.” The latter serves as a reminder of conditions at
Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, centres of American interrogation and
torture.
Jonathon Cook’s introduction to all these tales of misery provides a
strong clear précis of political-military events summarizing the
Israeli position on land and population. Himself the author of
an excellent work on Palestine (“Blood and Religion – the Unmasking
of the Jewish and Democratic State.” Pluto Books, 2006), Cook
discusses the nature of the “democratic” part of the Israeli
declaration of a “Jewish and democratic state.” The various
anecdotes and stories within “A Doctor in Galilee” overwhelmingly
indicate that Israel is anything but democratic, and tends in the
opposite direction, as a racist, genocidal, and apartheid state.
This is an excellent story for everyone, citizen or politician, a
great start for those beginning to examine the problems within
Palestine, and for those who consider themselves experts in the
field. Kanaaneh strengthens and explores the dimension of
family, friends, village and genealogy that are as much a part of
the story of Palestine as the wars and political rhetoric. His final
note is of hope, of the roots of the ancient olive tree that “can
prove my belonging to this piece of the earth’s crust…that I
inherited from my father, who inherited it from his father, who….”
Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular
contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The
Palestine Chronicle. Miles’ work is also presented globally
through other alternative websites and news publications.
jmiles50@telus.net
www.jim.secretcove.ca/index.Publications.html
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