When Ishmael Khalidi was a child he would walk several miles to school every day
in the blazing sun or in the bitter cold. Since then he has traveled far, his
journey taking him from a Galilee village that he describes as a “backwater with
no electricity or running water” to become Israel’s first – and so far only –
Beduin diplomat.
Khalidi, formerly Israel’s deputy consul general in San
Francisco, and now Arab affairs adviser to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman,
has a soft voice but a steely character. His chiseled features seem almost
carved out of the rocky landscape of his youth, his penetrating gaze a mark of
his indomitable will.
From a young age Khalidi stood out, and before long
his parents realized that his future would lie outside of the village, outside
of the confines of Beduin custom and tradition.
The third of 11 brothers
and sisters, he attended the prestigious Arab Orthodox College in Haifa where
for the first time he was confronted with the issue of identity. As the only
Beduin student he found himself asking, “Am I Arab, Israeli, Muslim or Beduin?”
He relates how while as a Beduin he felt pride in the State of Israel, his
classmates, whom he labels “brutal creatures who either ignored me or called me
names” affiliated themselves with the various Palestinian national movements,
and how on Remembrance Day when he stood for a minute’s silence they called him
a traitor.
But to typecast Khalidi as an outcast looking for a sense of
belonging, as someone seeking to throw in his lot with the majority, would be to
draw the wrong conclusion.
“I belong nowhere,” he says. “My roots are no
roots and my real people are my tribe.”
When I ask Khalidi why, as a
Beduin, as a Muslim, he decided to represent the State of Israel, he replies,
half in jest, “perhaps from a personal point of view, as a Beduin, traveling is
in my blood.”
The he adds: “Especially at this time, when Israel is under
attack, when there are attempts to deny its legitimacy, it is my duty, my role,
as a member of a minority, to stand up and speak.”
Khalidi, 39, and
unusually for a Beduin still a bachelor, describes the path that took him from
Khawalid near Kiryat Ata to the Foreign Ministry in a recently selfpublished
book A Shepherd’s Journey. He says he wrote the book “because people don’t
understand the country from the inside,” and that he tried to present things
through his personal story rather than try to tackle the wider philosophical
problems of identity and minorities in Israel, issues he says he does plan to
take on in a later updated version that he is working on currently.
AFTER
HIGH school, in the summer of 1990, he took a gap year and after working on a
kibbutz to save money he traveled to America, hardly knowing a word of
English.
When he arrived his only contact, from a kibbutz near his
village, could not be reached. Lost and on the verge of tears, he approached a
hassid who sent him to Brooklyn, where he ended up staying with a Chabad
family.
“I stayed with them for five days until they realized I was a
Beduin, Muslim and not Jewish,” he recalls. “I grew up believing that Israel was
an inseparable part of Jewish identity and I expected that in Brooklyn people
would know that almost 21 percent of the population of Israel are not Jewish. I
expected them to know that I am part of that minority, but that I am an Israeli
and my connection to Israel as a Jewish state began not in 1948 but before that
when the first pioneers came.”
“That moment,” says Khalidi “was when the
connection started. That was when my realization of my belonging to the state
and my ability to represent the state began to develop.”
On his return
from his year in the US he enrolled at the University of Haifa, where he studied
political science.
There he made his first foray into diplomacy, hosting
overseas students in his village and giving them a taste of Beduin hospitality.
After completing his studies, Khalidi volunteered for military service with the
Border Police, and after that he enrolled for a master’s in international
relations at Tel Aviv University.
In 2002, at the height of the second
intifada, he decided to return to the US as a citizen diplomat, and spoke on
several college campuses. There he experienced anti-Israel activism and found
himself in the “eye of the storm,” standing up for Israel.
“I had put my
life on the line for my country and now I wanted to serve it in a political way
as a diplomat,” he says. “I spoke simply of one man’s story within Israeli
culture, society and politics. My goal was to advocate for Israel and dispel the
myriad of erroneous facts that are unfortunately accepted as
truth.”
After two years of citizen diplomacy he decided it was time for
the real thing. It took him until the third attempt to pass the Foreign
Ministry’s cadet entrance examination. “I did the six-month course and then I was
thrown in at the deep end when I was sent to work as a spokesman for the [Gaza]
disengagement in July 2005 in the Arab media department,” Khalidi recalls. “It
was the first time that a non- Jewish person was appointed to speak in front of
the Arab media as Israel’s representative.”
His stint with the Arab media
department was followed by a year-long spell with the ministry’s North
America
department and then the historic appointment as Israel’s first Beduin
diplomat,
to the position of deputy consul general in San Francisco Khalidi
describes the
appointment as a “hardship post” because of the vocal anti-Israel
contingent in
the Bay Area. One of the experiences that he remembers most clearly is a
dialogue with the organizers of Israel Apartheid Week on UC Berkeley.
“If Israel
were an apartheid state, I would not have been appointed here, nor would
I have
chosen to take upon myself this duty,” he told his interlocutors.
Shortly
after returning from the Bay, Khalidi was offered the post as adviser to
Lieberman, a position he had no problem accepting.
“I have no problems
working with Lieberman,” he says of his often controversial boss.
“Everyone has
their own political opinions, I represent the foreign minister without
any
connection to politics.”
Khalidi concedes though that “there are people
who know how to say things more subtly.” He adds, though, that Lieberman
is
surprisingly well respected in the Arab sector. “He says what he has to
say in a
very direct fashion. He puts his position on the table. I travel a lot
in the
Arab sector and people respect him more than any other politician, and
the
reason is that he is honest and direct.”
What he does have a problem
with, however, is the perception that his appointment came as a cover
for the
foreign minister’s extreme positions. “The first reaction I received
after
returning from San Francisco was from a very senior media personality
who is now
a member of Knesset. He said to me, ‘I know you; you’re Lieberman’s fig
leaf.’
That was very offensive and insulting to me and for me it points to how
‘dirty’
Israeli politics are. People are willing to do anything to smear.”