Dennis Fox’s Weblog

A friend forwarded this article describing efforts to document efforts to improve conditions in Rahat, the Bedouin city I visited yesterday:

A Bedouin woman is making socially-aware films that take a hard look at the problems faced by her community in Israel’s Negev desert, thanks to a grant from an Israeli non-governmental organization and a film class run by an Israeli film-maker. Kamla Abu-Zaela, who lives in Rahat, a Bedouin city of 40,000 approximately 15 miles north of Beersheva, is the recipient of the 2006 Yaffa London-Ya’ari scholarship. … to improve lives and conditions within their communities.

“Bedouin women are brave, and they struggle,” said Abu-Zaela, 31, an English teacher who has a newborn baby and two sons of school age, told ISRAEL21c. “We encounter many different problems, particularly as we are working within a very traditional society.”

Abu-Zaela has already made two short films which chronicle aspects of life in her community. The first, Gamila, daughter of Rahat‘, tells the story of a Bedouin woman living in Rahat who, unable to speak Hebrew, finds it very difficult when she has to go to a hospital in Beersheva with stomach pains. An empowerment class gives her the help she needs to improve her education and raise her self-esteem. The second film, Salach, tackles the issue of peer pressure amongst young Bedouin boys. ….

The article focuses on polygamy among Bedouins, which Abu-Zaela says “is actually getting worse! Tradition says women should accept the situation and shut up! Unfortunately, our tradition supports men even if they are in the wrong.”

The article also describes The Film Class, the latest film by the director who introduced Abu-Zaela to film work, Uri Rosenwaks:

The Film Class documents the moment when, halfway through the film, Rosenwaks discovers to his amazement that the group members know almost nothing about their own history as “black” Bedouin - darker-skinned Bedouin tribes that originated in North Africa and were brought to the Middle East as slaves - and for which they suffer racism within the Bedouin community. To help teach the women about their history, Rosenwaks raises funds and persuades them to travel with him to Zanzibar to see exactly where their ancestors came from and where their slavery began in the 19th century, which he documents in the film.

I noticed yesterday that Black Bedouins were common in Rahat (as in one of the photos I posted). I also saw this in Jerusalem’s Old City last week.

Polygamy and modernization. Race and religion. Subordination and activism. Gets complicated here.

I don’t remember if I commented on this yet, but I’ve been noticing recently that some points of conflict between the Israeli government and its Bedouin and other Palestinian citizens, and between Israel and Palestinians in occupied territories, reflect broader global trends toward modernization, urbanization, corporatization. Traditional societies around the world are succumbing, or have already succumbed, to a modernized, technologized world. (Note that I don’t call this transformation “progress.”)

As occurred in the US for more than the past century, small farms give way to agribusiness, farmers’ children move to the city, the nature of work changes along with everything else, and kids grow up expecting education, professional jobs, retirement funds, and a manageably small family of their own, as they see reflected on television, movies, school textbooks, and the Internet.

I’m not sure what it would take for a healthy traditional culture to resist this transformation as globalization speeds ahead in accordance with corporate priorities rather than people’s needs or wishes. When a traditional culture is already in trouble — fragmented, thrown into poverty, subject to decisions made elsewhere — successful resistance seems to me possible only in isolated ways.

Jamal, my host yesterday in Rahat, told me that Bedouin in Jordan are also undergoing many changes, but there the external forces come from a Bedouin-dominated national government whose officials understand the nature of the culture they are trying to alter. I don’t know any details of how this operates, but it makes sense to me that Bedouin cultural change takes on a different tone when the outside forces are in an Israeli Jewish government whose dominant officials and bureaucrats have relatively little understanding of, or sympathy for, Bedouin ways.

I don’t know how Israel’s Bedouin will deal in future generations with polygamy and other cultural practices that women now reject as oppressive, or how many more years older Bedouin will insist on having sheep and goats in their urban backyards, or whether the sheikh’s already dwindling authority will become ultimately irrelevant. But I do think changes such as these would meet with less rejection and hostility and cause less internal division if they were managed primarily from within the community rather than imposed by outsiders who would be happier if all the Bedouin moved to Jordan.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Israel/Palestine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.