LITERATURE AND NATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST

hannah amit-kochaviwooden plough), weapons (such as the gun, the sword and the shibriyyah dagger)and social values (such as courage and hospitality). Avraham Shalom YehezkelYahuda (1877–1951), a Jerusalem-born scholar of ancient Arabic poetry, wrotein his preface to Nedivei ve Giborei ÆArav [Arab noblemen and heroes], acollection of translated ancient Arabic poetry he published in the Luah:Hebrew readers are sure to enjoy learning the ways of the Arab people, their customsand habits since they became a single people upon the earth … for they were muchlike those of our ancestors in manner, habit and generosity, feeding the hungry andfaithfully defending their neighbour and those seeking shelter in their tents … at thetime when they were still peacefully sitting upon their land. Hebrew readers mayfurther rejoice to learn that many of our brethren, the children of Israel, thenpeacefully lived among the Arabs … and that they, too, were no inferior to theArabs, for like them they begot such great noblemen as ÆAdayah and Shmuel [al-Samaw’al] 2 his son who dedicated their entire lives to do good to their neighbours aswell as to the people amongst whom they were living, that out of them, too, sprangup some heroes, and that they too made themselves a great name in the history of theArabs though their ventures, faith, bravery and poetry. (Luah 1986: 89–90)This sentimental elaboration of the figure of the single known pre-IslamicJewish Arabic poet overtly advocates the Arab model to be imitated whilecovertly propagating coexistence between the two nations on the basis of apresumed shared glorious past.Arabic literatures, to use Ami Elad-Bouskila’s definition (1999: 3–8), arehierarchically graded both chronologically and by quality. Egyptian literature isthe earliest and most prolific Arabic literature, while Palestinian literature is theyoungest and weakest in all genres except poetry. The Hebrew translated inventory,however, while retaining quantitive Egyptian priority, also demonstratespreference for Palestinian literature from both the Occupied Territories andIsrael, in clear contrast to its relative scantness and weakness. This has been truesince the 1970s, which marked a change in the attitude of Israeli Jews towardsthe Palestinian people. Between 1948 and 1967 Palestinians were the absent‘other’ and Arab refugees were referred to by Israeli Jewish press, radio andofficial authorities as ‘infiltrators’, and later as ‘terrorists’. Israeli Arabs weremetaphorically seen as present-absentees (Grossmann 1992) or subtenantsrather than fully fledged citizens (Benziman and Mansour 1992), since Israelkept its Arab population under confining military government (1948–64). Allmarks of Palestinian national identity, including literature, were labelled as‘dangerous’ and ‘a threat to state security’. The earliest translations of poems byMahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qasim were therefore made by and forgovernmental bodies in charge of so-called ‘Arab affairs’. Some of these‘dangerous’ materials were later published as part of studies of Israeli Arabliterature in Hamizrah he-Hadash [New Orient], an academic publication of the— 104 —www.taq.ir