A poet slips

[Ron Kuzar]

 I see that all (ex)Israelis on this list are throwing in their 2Cs.
Here are mine.
One of the slippery things about identity is that it is dynamic,
multiple, and defies one-word definitions. Israeli Arabs/Palestinians
are a sector of Israel's citizenry. I even hesitate to say that they are
a community, but even if they are, they are as diversified among
themselves, as any other citizenry nowadays. Just because they happen to
be Arabs (people of the Orient) doesn't mean you can easily draw
generalizing cultural conclusions any more than you could do this about
SAE nations. I am saying all this, because I hear an Orientalistic tone
in both John's and Aya's postings, who just simply know and are so quick
to define Arab/Palestinian/Arabic speaking citizens of Israel as either
this or that.
Some Israeli Arabs put more emphasis on their general ethnic common
origin, others more on their local Palestinian side of their identity,
others yet are first and foremost Muslims, or Christians, some slip in
and out of this or that identity every five years, and some couldn't
care less and would in fact become Hebrew speaking Israeli's, if the
Israeli system had been more forthcoming. 
Masalha himself is from Druze origin, a minority that has been
persecuted by Muslim majority for centuries. This resulted in massive
support of Zionism by the Druze and they go to the army and fight the
Arabs without hesitation. Except that this is also a massive
generalization. Israel's Jewish ethnocentric laws and practices don't
even fully embrace the Druze population with great love, a fact which
brought some of them to identify with and to view themselves as
Palestinian and to struggle for the common Palestinian cause.
Add to this the fact that any two communities living together produce
hybridity, and you will find all sorts of creative (and wonderful)
hybrid people who combine Jewish and Arab identities in their
personality. Masalha himself is from Druze origin, anti Zionist, but he
is also a poet, writing in both Hebrew and Arabic, and also a translator
both ways.
This is only a shallow introduction to the complexities of identity for
those of you who are not so well informed in this discussion.
The question of language is a very complex one, precisely because the
educational system has to devise a model that would be equally
beneficial for a widely diversified community.
Assuming that there is an Arab speaking population in Israel (which we
don't have to define culturally for the sake of this discussion) and
assuming that many of them support the idea that Arabic should be
maintained and should be the first schooling language for these people,
we may indeed observe that Arab children are faced with two languages,
their native "dialect" and the language of broad cultural exchange in
the Arab world today. If one day the native tongues are going to become
official languages of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Yemen, etc. I am
sure that the Palestinians will follow suit, and the Israeli Arabs will
be a part of this process. It is not reasonable to expect Israeli Arabs
to be the pioneers here. 
Now, Modern Standard Arabic is not Classical (Quran) Arabic, it is a
modern language that has been revived parallel to the revival of Hebrew,
except that the revival of Hebrew included the spoken language and the
revival of Arabic was only in the written language. This is however a
full-fledged communication system, in which anything can be written,
from engineering to modern philosophy.
Another complicating factor is the fact that MSA and local dialects are
not a dichotomy but rather a scale. The is the more formal form, which
is a simplified version of Classical Arabic, but then there is also a
simplified version of this language that is used without the case
endings, and sometimes in the SVO order of the spoken language, and so
on.
While it is true that the Internet and Facebook have brought about new
ways of communicating in some koine forms of the spoken dialects, it is
not true that the whole population shares this mode of communication
(only the more privileged ones) and you certainly cannot write books on
philosophy and engineering in these language forms. So let's be a little
more careful about giving sweeping simple answers to the complex
situation of learner of Arabic as a first language.
In fact, the Arabs are not the first ones to have to face such a complex
linguistic situation. I would suggest that this issue be approached with
more cultural sensitivity and attempts to to operate within the
given complex situation. Believe me, with a good schooling system that
is well funded and has a good educational leadership (which is not the
case in Israel at large, and is much worse in the Arab sector), the left
and right hemispheres of the brain will adjust just fine, and will learn
what they need to do to deal with all the complexities, despite the
"difficult" cursive alphabet, despite the right-to-left writing direction,
and despite all other "objective" difficulties.
Ron Kuzar
----------------
On Thu, 30 Sep 2010 05:42:11 -0700 (PDT)
"A. Katz" <amnfn at well.com> wrote:

> Tom,
> 
> I feel the need to point out a few things:
> 
> 1) There are no Arab students in the Israeli primary schools. There are 
> those whose native language is Arabic, but they are not ethnically Arabs.
> Israeli citizens who do not identify as Israeli used to think of themselves as 
> fellahin and now often identify as Palestinian -- precisely because they 
> were not allowed to go to an integrated school where the only language 
> spoken is Hebrew. They are ethnically Judeans who never went away.
> 
> 2) The language of Genesis is the language that was revived by Zionists in 
> the 19th century. I learned to read Hebrew in the language of Genesis. 
> (And yes, I was born in Israel.) My father learned to read Hebrew in the 
> language of Genesis. He was born in Poland. It was his first language, 
> and the first language he was literate in. His parents were Zionists 
> who learned to read Hebrew in the language of the OT. If it were not for 
> people who learned to read Hebrew in the language of Genesis, there would be no 
> native Hebrew speakers in the world today.
> 
> Right cortex or left is a personal matter, depending on how you are wired. 
> Left handers and right handers do it differently. But native speaker or 
> oursider has everything to do with how you are treated and which school 
> you go to.
> 
> 
>       --Aya
> 
> http://hubpages.com/hub/ISRAEL-The-Two-Halves-of-the-Nation
> 
> http://hubpages.com/hub/My-Grandfathers-Voice-Recordings-of-Benzion-Katz
> 
> On Thu, 30 Sep 2010, Tom Givon wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> >                                     A GREAT POET CAN STILL GET IT WRONG
> >
> >        I  came  to know of Salman Masalha ("Arabs, speak Hebrew!", 
> > Haaretz/English, International  Herald  Tribune  9-27-10) accidentally by 
> > stumbling a on his truly  great quote:
> >              "All fixed identities are imposed from the outside.
> >                Whoever  has a clear identity knows it can assume multiple 
> > forms".
> > In the context  of Palestine/Israel, what a breath of  fresh, rare clarity. 
> > Still, like the rest of us mortals, a  great poet can on occasion get it 
> > wrong  too, and Mr. Masalha--may he be forgiven; pun intended--surely got 
> > only one third of the story right. At first, he was led astray be the 
> > academic researchers he cited, who claimed that the lagging reading skills of 
> > Israeli-Arab students is correlated  to lagging  R-hemisphere  activity, 
> > then explained this neurological lag by suggesting that the Arab script 
> > requires more contextual analysis. But  it is the R-hemisphere of the human 
> > cortex that is more context oriented, less automated. If Arab-reading 
> > students required more contextual labor, it should have been registered as a 
> > higher R-hemisphere activity, not lower.
> >         Works by M. Posner, S. Petersen, M. Raichle and S. Dahane, among 
> > many others, have established  beyond  reasonable  doubt  that written words 
> > in all languages (English, Mandarin, Hindi, Amharic, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) 
> > are  decoded automatically in an L-hemisphere module on the boundary of the 
> > occipital and temporal lobes (just past Brodman's Area 19), along the ventral 
> > visual object-recognition 'stream'  that flows  from the back to the front of 
> > the L-cortex. And the L-cortex is in general responsible for  the more 
> > automated--less context-dependent--processing of language (as  well as 
> > visual, motor and other skills). The visual word-recognition module is,  in 
> > turn, recruited  from  the pre-existing  visual object-recognition 
> > ventral-stream  module. A considerable amount of life-time practice and 
> > repetition is required to affect this late-cultural adaptation. The human 
> > brain is not (yet) genetically configured  at birth for visual-word 
> > recognition, only for visual-object recognition. A similar cultural 
> > adaptation, this one for math, has been shown for (Dahaene & Cohen, 2007; see 
> > recent article in The New Yorker by Oliver Sachs)
> > in the L-pareita lobe, an area originally configured for analysis of 
> > object-location in space.
> >             Mr. Masalha  then, on his own, points out to a more plausible 
> > right answer: Arab students, in Israel as well as all over the Arab world, 
> > are  not  taught literacy in  their native language (Falastini, Maghrebi, 
> > Masri, Yemeni, etc.), but in a frozen literary instrument harking back 1,400 
> > years or more. That is, in a foreign language. The discrepancy would be  just 
> > as great  if  Israeli kids were taught  their Hebrew literacy  first in the 
> > language of Genesis; or if  French  students  were taught literacy  first in 
> > the language of  La Chançon de Roland, Guilhome de Machaut, or Chrê tien de 
> > Troyes. Or  English-speaking  kids in the language  of Beowolf. As far as my 
> > frail guessing powers go,  remedying the situation would be much easier by 
> > combining two well-known verities of second language acquisition: (a) Teach 
> > them  both early, together--'co-ordinated bilingualism'. And (b), teach 
> > literacy first in the student's spoken native language; only then gradually 
> > 'stretch' it to more literary genres.  This method, bhy the way,  was 
> > suggested in the late 1930's by no other than  L. Bloomfield, in a book 
> > outlining a  'phonics-first ' literacy  program for native English speakers. 
> > Rather than depriving Israeli-Arab students of literacy in their own--equally 
> > glorious--native language, just teach them smart.
> >              For  his last culprit, the presumed--tho  hardly 
> > unique--vulgarity  of Arab media, Mr. Masalha lapses into well recognized 
> > prejudices of  the educated classes. While readily endorsing his aesthetic 
> > sentiments about modern media, I would still like to point out that the 
> > 'vulgar' genre is  much closer to the Arab students'  spoken native language, 
> > and  if anything should facilitate the easier  initial acquisition of 
> > native-language literacy. Respectuosamente, ma'-salaam,
> >
> >                                                                                                                                               T. 
> > Givón
> >
> >

===============================================
                       Dr. Ron Kuzar
Address:       Department of English Language and Literature
                       University of Haifa
                       IL-31905 Haifa, Israel
Office:           +972-4-824-9826, Fax: +972-4-824-9711
Home:           +972-77-481-9676, Mobile: +972-54-481-9676
Home fax:     153-77-481-9676 (only from Israel)
Email:            kuzar at research.haifa.ac.il
Homepage:  http://research.haifa.ac.il/~kuzar
===============================================