A house of books opens its doors to dialogue, in Arabic and Hebrew

When Raquel Ukeles, curator of the Islam and Middle East Collection at the National Library of Israel, began planning a fall series with local Arab cultural figures more than two years ago, she couldn’t have known the first event would end up taking place the day after the funeral of Orwa Hammad, a 14-year-old American-Palestinian who was shot by IDF troops as he was preparing to throw a firebomb at traffic.

Just five hours before the first event — a conversation with writers Ala Hlehel and Salman Natour — was scheduled to start, Hlehel canceled.

It didn’t bode well for the series.

“We wanted to invite Hlehel because he’s one of the leading voices of the younger Palestinian generation and we wanted this to be an authentic series,” said Ukeles. “He agreed and was open to it, until he canceled on the day of the event. That was challenging.”

The library went on with the event, hosting Natour and Dr. Samir Hajj, a scholar of Palestinian and modern Arabic literature, and it turned out to be a “phenomenal” experience, according to Ukeles. At least half of the 120 people in the audience were Arabs, a first for the library.

“It was really meaningful,” she said. “It was the first time that the ‘Nakba’ was talked about at the National Library.” Nakba Day is marked by Palestinians on May 15 to commemorate the “catastrophe” of the creation of Israel and the war that surrounded it.

Natour said he was moved by how respectful the evening was and glad to find he had a platform to speak his truth. “That’s the purpose.”

Speaking volumes

As with any event involving Jews and Arabs, there were reasons other than the funeral for why Hlehel canceled, and it was more complex than just timing.

While Ukeles was planning the series over the summer, Arab students were engaged in protests against the Gaza war and, in turn, were on the receiving end of hate emails and Facebook posts from Jewish students. In response, Arab students organized against normalization and Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, and advocated boycotting such Israeli institutions as the National Library.

The library, by dint of being called “national” and because it has a collection of Palestinian documents and books on deposit since 1948, is often seen in a negative light by some Palestinian intellectuals. So the library set out to change that.

“I had no idea the library even existed,” said Ghada Zoabi, a public relations expert hired by the library and founder of the Israeli-Arab Bokra.net news site. “I said, ‘Let’s explain the library — that it’s a rich resource and not political at all.’”

It wasn’t a smooth process, recalled Zoabi, who contacted Arab journalists and asked them to leave their politics aside and just look at the material they could access. “But people were nervous. They made noise about the library’s logo (a form of the Israeli flag); they tried to boycott the library.”

As the country’s national library, it does work with government institutions, including the Prime Minister’s Office, on several projects, said Ukeles. But when she talks about the library’s 1,800 manuscripts, she purposely leaves out the 600 in the Palestinian collection in an effort to avoid laying claim to something that others believe should not be in the library’s collection.

The library’s efforts to open itself to the broader public through the cultural series ended up opening the institution to more criticism.

As a result of recent unrest and activism, a debate developed in Arabic media and on Facebook over the library’s events. Op-eds discussed why the library was doing the series, ultimately deeming it a “kind of imperialism,” said Ukeles, as if the library were attempting to claim Arabic culture as part of Israeli culture.

Open to the public

The National Library, which has been hosted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1925, will be moving off campus in a few years.

Construction of the new building will begin in 2016 and is expected to be completed by 2019. Designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, the 34,000-square-meter, six-floor structure will be located between the Knesset and the Israel Museum.

Not only will it be more accessible, in addition to collecting and preserving material, said Ukeles, but it will also be the scene of a conscious effort to draw in the Arab public.

University surveys revealed that 90% of Israeli Jews had no idea that there was a national library or where it was even located. Even fewer among the Arab community knew, including Arab academics. The library now aims to draw in a wider audience, and specifically, the Arab audience in Israel.

The purpose of the library’s cultural series is twofold: to highlight Arab culture for the mainstream audience, but also to attract the Arab intellectual community.

The first series that Ukeles organized took place three years ago and was called “Sacred Texts and Masterpieces of Islamic Culture.”

“We did this evening on the Quran and 200 people came out, all leaning over the glass display case looking at 25 Qurans we brought out,” she said. “It was very moving — there was all this impromptu Jewish-Muslim discussion over text, and a significant minority of the audience was Muslim.”

Another event, “Between Two Halves of an Orange” — a phrase used in a string of published letters between Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and Palestinian-Druze poet Samih al-Qasim — highlights how serious the library is about opening up to the Arab sector.

A more recent session held on November 13 included two actors, Salwa Naqqara and Afif Shlewet, who did monologues in Arabic with Hebrew transliteration on the screen.

Despite student protests, some cancellations and the anti-normalization movement, the cultural series is still seen as a success.

“There’s a situation now and tension, and people came and participated,” Zoabi said. “The artists were scared to come, fearful of the reaction they’d get, but now they’re happy they came.”

Still, Ukeles found herself holding her breath before a lecture held a week after the attack at a Har Nof synagogue in Jerusalem on November 18.

On Monday night, Israeli TV presenter Kobi Meidan hosted the cast and producer of “Avodah Aravit” (Arab Labor), the popular four-season television series from Keshet Broadcasting written by columnist Sayed Kashua.

No one canceled, to Ukeles’ relief.

Sitting in front of a packed audience, the actors and Meidan discussed the show’s impact. “Avodah Aravit” was Israel’s first prime-time television show depicting Arabic-speaking main characters and taking a comical look at the cultural divide between Arabs and Jews in Israel. The show mirrored Kashua’s own life as a journalist and writer, which he revealed in a weekly Haaretz magazine column.

When the show won five prizes at the 2013 Israeli Academy of Film and Television awards, Kashua quipped, “We get about 20 percent of the prizes, just like our percentage of the population.”

Mira Awad, whose character marries a Jewish man and who in real life is married to a Jewish Israeli, spoke about how much the show did for viewers, even if it’s not something that’s actively felt in Israeli society.

“This show is a little like a catharsis,” she said. “No hate or hatred.”

She talked about the show’s ability to “stop being so polite and politically correct about everything” having to do with Arabs and Jews.

“All of Israel are responsible for one another,” joked Salim Dau, who played the comedic Abu Amjad in the show. In Hebrew, the phrase uses the word arevim, which is translated as responsible, and can also be a play on the term for Arabs, aravim.

Producer Shai Kapon commented that “the best part about the show was playing with humor, and our understanding of human beings.”

They also spoke about Kashua’s decision to remain in the US after his scheduled sabbatical there and leave Israel for good. Kashua’s announcement made waves among his readership, for he was seen as someone who actively worked to dissipate the dissonance between Arabs and Jews. In October, The New Yorker published an emotional exchange between Kashua and Israeli author Etgar Keret as they discussed their feelings about the summer’s war in Gaza.

“If he leaves, we can all go,” said Meidan. “Someone like Sayed, with his talent, goes and takes his talent with him, ridding himself of the responsibilities of this place.” 

By and large, however, the cast, raised in northern Arab towns and well-accustomed to life in Israel, steered clear of the recent uptick in violence throughout the country.

“Politics is so dominant in terms of how Jews and Arabs think of each other these days,” Ukeles said. “I wanted to bracket it and have people hear about how they do their work. We’re looking at them as artists.”

The fourth and final event of the series will feature Arab music as Meidan converses with Amal Markus, with the participation of four musicians on the oud, violin, kanoon, piano and percussion instruments, Tuesday, December 8. Tickets cost NIS 30 each and can be purchased at the National Library website, www.nli.org.il, or by calling 074-733-6181.