A fire swept into the voice of Northwestern professor Elie Rekhess at the mention of October 2000, when Arab unrest erupted into riots in Israel. “I was warning,” he said with raw frustration, “I have documents. I warned the prime minister.” The severity of the unrest was the focus of a letter Rekhess sent Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak. When his warnings were ignored, the situation escalated — just as he’d expected. Months later, police killed thirteen Israeli Arab rioters.
Rekhess had been an advisor to the prime minister on Israeli Arab issues. A year earlier, in 1999, he had helped then-candidate Barak win election with 96 percent support from Israeli Arab voters. According to Rekhess, the campaign platform was “a detailed document covering every single aspect of life — what the government could’ve done, in order to deepen the integration of Arabs into the state of Israel.” At the time, Rekhess believed Barak capable of more than status quo inaction.
Instead, he sat powerless holding letters he’d written screaming for action months earlier. The seeming futility of these advisory letters, letters he would later present before a commission of inquiry, coupled with the sting of knowing he’d helped elect the official who ignored them, led Rekhess to realize the political arena was not the best for change. An offer from Northwestern re-focused his efforts on a scholarly approach to peace.
Now he is working to foster a deeper understanding in young people of the forces at the root of the conflict. As Visiting Crown Chair in Middle East Studies at Northwestern, Rekhess is teaching courses related to Israel and the Arab minority and is an integral part of getting discussion going through Northwestern’s Middle East Forum (NUMEF) and Buffett Center projects.
As a child, he was intrigued by the Arabic language. Rekhess wondered about the “other” Israelis, the Arab minority. The older he got, the more aware he became of the tension that pulsed through the striking Mediterranean nation like an electric current. He had some questions — chief among them, how to de-mobilize his home. Rekhess, then perhaps the age of a Northwestern freshman, struck the question that would found his life’s work. He went on to hold key positions in NGOs, universities and the Israeli government — including the Israeli Defense Forces, where he served for years as an officer.
But while talking to Rekhess, it is easy to forget his slew of titles. Despite the manuscripts and a conference in Washington, D.C., I know to be on his mind for the week, he speaks without a hint of urgency, like a man at peace with what he has done.
In 2009, Israeli authorities debated outlawing the Islamic Movement, an Israeli Muslim advocacy group. Rekhess split his class into teams. He asked students who agreed with the ban to argue against it, and vice versa. He says he aims for students to “touch their own nerves.”
He hopes his students will meet an increasingly polarized world with a new paradigm. And he is uniquely poised to get students talking about the conflict. Personally, he is part of the Jewish majority; Rekhess is a proud Zionist Israeli who fought in behalf of Israel in four wars. Professionally, however, he is an expert on the Arab minority, a group often alienated on ethnic and religious grounds from people with his background. “The fact that I’m Israeli and Jewish teaching the Middle East can be a problem or a disadvantage,” Rekhess says. “I’m trying to turn it into an advantage.”
It might be easy to smell controversy and a conflict of interest. How is Rekhess able to educate a diverse group about Israel, Judaism, Palestinian politics, Islam and Arabs? The trick, Rekhess thinks, is to challenge students — she might be Arab or might be American with a stubborn perception of foreigners — to judge him by ability alone.
