Ramzi Baroud Pays Tribute to Israel Shahak
Originally published in Arabia.com

Mourning the death of Jewish professor Israel Shahak

Those familiar with Shahak’s work know that making friends was the man’s least concern. His unquestionable motive was seeking the truth.

By Ramzy Baroud

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: - On a quiet Wednesday afternoon, July 5, an Israeli Jewish professor was laid to rest in a Jerusalem cemetery, Giv’at Shaul. The loss of any dedicated individual is a tragedy, but when that individual is Israel Shahak, then the loss is deep, incomprehensible and universal.

Shahak’s intellectual genius made him a renowned scientist and a distinguished chemist. His dedicated research in cancer treatment following his appointment as a lecturer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1963, garnered him international recognition. But in Israel, his own country, Shahak was vilified and despised.

The Israeli left and right have hardly embraced a similar belief as much as there agreement on hating Shahak. In Israel, the man was, and remains after his death, a unique phenomena perceived by the liberals as radical and dubbed by the conservatives as "a self-hating Jew," "Israel hater" and "Arabophile."

Those familiar with Shahak’s work must have known that making friends was the man’s least concern while writing; his unquestionable motive that are clearly evident in every word he wrote was seeking the truth. Yet another undeniable fact is that the core arguments posed by Shahak were immersed in compassion, devotion and courage.

Born to middle class Polish parents in a Warsaw ghetto on April 28, 1933, Shahak passed through a cycle of a depressing life. At the age of 10, he was forced with his parents into the Poniatowo concentration camp. There he lost his father, escaped and was re-arrested to spend two years in despair.

From the savagery of the camp, Shahak learned humanity, and when he was released, he went to Israel because he was told that the promised land was a safe haven for the Jews. His early years in Israel, some spent in military service, were an eye opener for young Shahak, who fought to escape the melancholy of the past and construct a brighter future.

While Zionist principals were taught to the newcomers, who were preparing to establish their lives in the new land, it was only a matter of time before Shahak began questioning the fallacies of Zionism.

He wrote, “in 1956 I eagerly swallowed all of Ben-Gurion’s political and military reasons for Israel initiating the Suez War, until he pronounced in the Knesset on the third day of that war that the real reason for it is the restoration of the Kingdom of David and Solomon to its biblical border. At this point in his speech almost every Knesset member spontaneously rose and sang the Israeli national anthem.”

Shahak’s rejection of racism and championing of human rights for Palestinians grew mainly out of Israel’s apartheid and racism. The emergence of his style of writing began as a natural refusal to submit to the bigotry and political deception promoted by his government.

Yet the man’s consequential involvement in the world of politics, and slow abandonment of the world of chemistry rose from one incident that was deeply troubling and left a never healing scar; it was when he “witnessed an ultra-religious Jew refuse to allow his phone to be used on the sabbath in order to call an ambulance for a non-Jew who happened to collapse in a Jerusalem neighborhood.”

Puzzeled by the cruelty of witnessing a fellow human die with no help simply because he was a “Gentile”, Shahak investigated the matter further, calling a meeting of members of the Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem. But their answer came cold and heartless, the Jewish man has acted in accordance with the religion, Shahak was told.

Shahak was outraged by the treatment of Palestinians by his own government, a fury that is reflected in his legacy. It is noteworthy that Shahak was not a foreseen outcome of an Israeli movement and school of thought. His anti-occupation conviction is unique, and is viewed by most Israelis, included the so-called peace movements, as extreme.

“After 1967, when I ceased being just a scientist and became a political being, my first reason was that after 1967 the Israeli aim was to dominate the Middle East, which every rational human being knows impossible. My second reason was that there must be a Palestinian state. It can come into being with a minimum of bloodshed or a maximum of bloodshed. Even if the Intifada were defeated, it would only cause a delay.”

Professor Amnon Rubinstein from the Meretz party, which resembles the Israeli left, urged the government to confiscate Shahak’s passport to halt his “slander” against Israel abroad.

The diabetes-stricken scholar was probably the loneliest true peace activist in the Jewish State. Not once did he waste the chance in a public speech to denounce the Israeli occupation and to expose the racism of such concepts as “a Jewish State” and “Jewish settlements”. As the vibrant head of the Council against House Destruction and later the Israeli Civil Rights League, Shahak was constantly harassed and defamed.

Many prominent Israeli voices demanded that Shahak be removed from the Hebrew University faculty. Others were consumed in verbally abusing him through the Israeli media.

Lea Ben Dor had a few ideas on how to deal with Shahak. Dor wrote in the Jerusalem Post in the mid 1970’s, “What should we do about the poor professor? The hospital? Or a bit of the Terrorism he approves? A booby-trap over the laboratory door?”

Nothing but death would have ended Shahak's quest for justice, not even his failing health, or the ceaseless defamation campaign launched against him in Israel, the United States and elsewhere.

With Israel Shahak's death, the phenomena has become a legacy; and the professor’s insightful work shall always testify to the rightfulness of the Palestinian struggle, the inhumanity of the vile occupation and the profound racism of the Zionist discourse.