Reflecting on the Crisis in Gaza
by Heidi Basch
If you've been following the news reported from Israel in the past two weeks, aside from the now-released Winograd Report determining the culpability for the Israeli Defense Forces’ failure in the Second Lebanon War of Summer 2006, the biggest story is the ongoing crisis in Gaza.
This week, Israel finally went through with its threat to drastically reduce fuel supplies in response to ongoing rocket attacks on Sderot, sending most of Gaza into an electricity emergency in which hospitals had to close down most wards save for intensive care.
Again, coming to the rescue of the people, Hamas blasted several holes in the border wall separating Gaza and Egypt, allowing a reported 500,000 Gazans to pour into Egypt in search of basic items, like food, drinking water, and cigarettes (for resale).
A border was blasted, and partially obliterated between the country of Egypt and the Gaza Strip. How interesting.
Mark Palmer, former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary when Communism collapsed, wrote a book in 2005, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators. In his book, and in his speaking appearance to my colleagues at the New England College in the Winter of 2006, Palmer claimed that to overthrow any regime, any dictator, or simply to cause the change desired, half a million people need to hit the streets and maximize the media's coverage of the event.
A group of human beings of that size simply can't go unnoticed or unaddressed if the world is watching.
Considering the aftermath of the blast of the Egypt-Gaza border wall, I'm thinking his hypothesis is exciting but hardly accurate. In Gaza, I'm pretty sure not a whole heck of a lot has changed.
Today, Israel's Supreme Court rejected an appeal made by the Israeli peace movement to lift restrictions on Gaza that are causing undue harm to civilians. And, moreover, the Court declared that according to the evidence presented, Israel is acting only on behalf of its defense from a militant force in Gaza that is purposefully targeting innocent Israelis, and that Israel may continue to cut fuel supplies as it sees needed so as to eliminate this threat to security.
What else? Israel isn't going to fix the blasted wall because, officially, it no longer occupies Gaza, but it appears that the Egyptians aren't in any particular rush to patch the holes. President Hosni Mubarak knows that if he hurts the Palestinians or makes a move that could upset the opposition forces in his own country led by the Muslim Brotherhood, he may be faced by more than a half a million citizens only too ready to kick him out of his post by force. In this case, possibly Mr. Palmer's formula may prove successful. It hasn't happened yet (emphasis on the yet), so we can't make any conclusions at this point in time.
Returning to the topic of the Gazans and their success in gathering Mr. Palmer’s critical mass number for change, in fact, slowly, they will no longer be able to visit the promised land of water and food, Egypt. The Egyptian government is forcing the small towns near the border to shut their shops and demanding that owners not resupply to meet the needs of the day-travelers from the Strip.
Fascinating, that the Palestinian historical narrative will one day recall this event as something of a miraculous incident in which the fighters of Hamas managed to overcome the obstacles to survival, allowing the people of Palestine to be saved from starvation, as they fled into the land of Egypt-- as opposed to from the land of Egypt.
Meanwhile, Israel's worst nightmare is coming true as tens upon tens of Palestinians are going from Gaza to Egypt and back with weapons that they usually have to transport in underground tunnels. How convenient.
Just Saturday, Egyptian forces intercepted 20 Palestinian men trying to enter Israel through the Sinai. They were carrying explosive devices for use in suicide bombings.
Still, I'm wondering if Hamas set a precedent this week for all the struggling peoples of the world. If you've got the explosives, you can explode your way into a better life, or at least some relief for the time being. Is world order or the semblance of it that we have today really so precarious?
Could I do something like that? Get the explosive power to enable 500,000 people or more somewhere to acquire the basic needs that I need only a few Israeli shekels and my two legs to walk me to the store to get?
Winograd Report http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/world/middleeast/31mideast.html?th&emc=th
500,000 Gazans http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1201465090913
Israel’s Supreme Court
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/world/middleeast/31gaza.html?ref=world
Muslim Brotherhood
http://i-cias.com/e.o/mus_br_egypt.htm
20 Palestinian Men
http://www.infolive.tv/en/infolive.tv-17035-israelnews-egyptian-security-forces-nab-20-armed-palestinians-explosives-sinai
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Milking Olives from the Tree
Backpack slung over my right shoulder and cup of coffee in my left hand, I hurriedly walked east on Arlozorov Boulevard in Tel Aviv, toward the North Tel Aviv bus station. In my backpack I carried a water bottle, my cell phone, money and a pumpkin biscuit I baked last night. If I were in another city, say San Francisco, and was seen hurrying in the quiet of the weekend morning, one could assume I was en route to a yoga class.
But here, in Tel Aviv, I was rushing to meet a group of people from Combatants for Peace, a group started by former Israeli soldiers and former Palestinian militants. At the bus station, I was to look for the bus that would take me and other participants into the West Bank to pick olives with Palestinian farmers.
I arrived at the station searching for my party. Although public buses do not run in Tel Aviv on Shabbat, from the small crowds of people clumped in various parts of the parking lot, it was obvious that on Saturdays the bus station is used as a meeting point for tourist groups. Buses with signs in the windshield saying, "Day-Trip to Nazareth" and "Jerusalem Tours" were parked in the lot, khaki clad tourists with hats, cameras and day packs were milling about.
Crossing another parking lot, I saw a different crowd of people, younger, sleepy-eyed people. It was the guy wearing the Che Guevara t-shirt, however, that indicated to me this was the group I came to meet. Sure enough, I asked a woman, "what group is this?" To which she replied, "the olive picking group."
Ten minutes later two buses arrived for two bus loads of Israelis, a few Americans and Australians headed for the West Bank.
We stopped in Jerusalem on the way for a bathroom break and to meet the other bus departing from Jerusalem. Shortly after that, we were on our way East through Jerusalem and South toward Hebron. Easily, we passed through a check point, driving alongside the separation wall, everyone in the bus looked out the window, some seeing the gray mass for the first time, others scanning the view for changes and additions to the gradual separation of Israel from the West Bank.
We drove South, past Hebron for maybe fifteen minutes when we pulled over to the side of the road near a place called Soussiya. Soussiya is a small village made up of a few rows of long tents, a small windmill that generates two hours of electricity per day, and a grove of olive trees. The residents of Soussiya live between a settlement and an Israeli military base.
Soussiya was not always located where it is today. The people of Soussiya were not originally from the West Bank. In 1948 they were expelled from their homes in Arad, south of Soussiya. They were relocated to Old Soussiya, up the road. After the 67' War, Old Soussiya was destroyed and replaced with a Jewish settlement. The Soussiya of today is the land, which the family we helped harvest olives has managed to hang onto despite ever-encroaching settlements and settler farming projects. The inhabitants of Soussiya are members of the same extended family. The rest of the family lives in a nearby city called Atta. Family from Atta come to Soussiya to help pick the olives from trees they've plucked green and black varieties since the 1800s.
It is not that the family of Soussiya and Atta have so many olive trees that they cannot manage the harvest on their own. This is not why we joined them under the hot sun and the cool breeze blowing in the Southwestern part of the West Bank today. Rather, we helped them because last year they were unable to harvest their trees.
The edge of the Soussiya olive grove rests at the foothills of a rocky-earth incline at the outskirts of a Jewish settlement. In years past, the settlers, who refuse to recognize that these people, the Palestinian residents of Soussiya own this land and therefore have the right to reap the harvest of their property, have attacked the children and mothers and fathers of Soussiya. They throw rocks, they threaten with weapons and the soldiers who are stationed in the area are obligated to protect the settlers-- the instigators, not the Palestinians. In the event that there are clashes between the two peoples, the soldiers arrest Palestinians if they react. Last year the people of Soussiya let the olives from their trees drop to the ground to bake in the bright sun. Between the settlers, the soldiers and the potential for violence, it was determined that the olives would not be harvested.
Combatants for Peace, Ta'ayush and Peace Now-- two Israeli-Palestinian peace groups and one Israeli, were informed of this village and others in a similar situation and organized a remedy the problem. Prearranged with the army, the soldiers are informed when groups are traveling to the West Bank to work with the Palestinians, this way they are present if and when settlers appear to meddle and intimidate the Palestinians.
By sending Israelis and internationals into the West Bank to pick olives with the Palestinians, the soldiers are obligated to protect the visiting Israelis, tourists and observers. Without us, they may not show up at all, leaving the Palestinians at the mercy of the settlers and each side's emotional and physical response to the other.
We started picking from the trees close to the highway. We were instructed to run our hands down the olive-laden branches, milking olives from the tree. The green, black and purplish orbs fell from the trees onto plastic tarps below and into plastic bags we attached to the belt loops of our pants. To get the olives at the top someone climbed into the center of the tree, coaxing the fruit from the wood. The steady pit-pat of olives falling to the ground became fainter and fainter as we successfully completed harvesting olives from one tree after another.
We moved to the center of the grove, buckets, tarps and USAID sacks following us. Smiles and basic questions like, "where are you from? how old are you? what do you study? are you Israeli?" helped us to establish a friendship with our hosts. It was strange to explain that I am American and Jewish.
"You are American and you are Jewish?" asked Amran, the spokesperson of the family.
"Yes," I replied, "I am American and I am Jewish."
Amran turned to his cousins and said, "yahoud, yahoud, fil America."
"Jew, Jew, from America."
Eventually, we reached the trees closest to th settlement and we continued to pick the olives. We started giggling at the abrasive braying of the village's donkeys on the hillside to our right.
On the hillside above us, fifty yards from where we were, a group of men and boys dressed in white appeared,tzitzit waving on the wind.
Settlers wearing white for Shabbat.
After the settlers, two border policemen, Magav, appeared with them. They wore helmets and batons stuck out from their hips. They positioned themselves between the settlers and us. We continued to drop olives into buckets, onto tarps, into bags.
The settlers stood there and watched.
After awhile they disappeared back up the hillside, the soldiers following behind them. We finished harvesting from the trees.
Heading toward the village, we came to the final group of trees, thicker trees, older trees whose olives were more obscure amongst the thick branches with abundant leaves. The family offered us sage tea sweetened with sugar. We sat together, the men smoking argileh, all of us drinking the sweet, sweet refreshing beverage. After that we continued the harvest until lunch arrived on the terraced land above us.
Together we sat on black tarps spread on the rocky soil with sharp, dried nettle branches shooting from the earth, surrounded by five olive trees and the speckled shade they offered. We at roasted chicken, rice, lentils, pita and hummus. The family joined us, small children sitting amongst our group enjoying the attention of strangers and the food.
An elder man of the family stood before us and thanked us for helping. This is when he told us the history of his family, how they live in nearby Atta and Soussiya. How unless they live on their land where the olive trees grow, they'll lose their livelihood to settler vineyards and greenhouses.
Shortly after lunch it was time to head back to Tel Aviv. We said farewell to our hosts, each side thanking the other. The Palestinians for our support and us for their giving us a way, or at least a feeling that we can and are doing something to help.
Waving to Amran and his cousin Yusuf from behind the tinted window of the bus, I felt acutely aware that I was about to move back from one reality to another. Inside, I also felt contentment, and a subtle calming peace settle over me. Perhaps from spending a day outside, amidst the branches and leaves of olive trees, perhaps from connecting in a small way with the people of Palestine who haunt my thoughts when I sit at Tel Aviv cafes and stroll through malls and boutiques, and jog along the nearby shores of the Mediterranean Sea. I am utterly baffledy by the urban, modern life I live in Tel Aviv, and the life that the farmers and shepherds of Palestine live not so far away.
Generally, Israelis are a boisterous people and culture. It is part of what is endearing and delightful about being here. Today though, in the olive grove of Soussiya, a solemnity pervaded the hours of the harvest. I can't imagine what it felt like for my Israeli friends to be there. What were their thoughts and feelings? What fears did they have to overcome to get on a bus to the West Bank? What hopes do they have? What do they see as their role in healing the wounds of so many decades? What can come of milking olives from the trees?
And our Palestinian friends. Does it help that they experience Israelis other than settlers and soldiers? Does it give them hope? Does it lessen the pain and hopelessness? I believe it does perhaps in small part.
For the first time in the eight months I have spent in Israel and the West Bank, I think I glimpsed what peace could be like here. It will come from a shared respect for each other. It will come from Israelis helping Palestinians pick olives, perhaps to ease the inherited guilt and confusion of those who are willing and able to accept it. It will come from Israelis and Palestinians experiencing each other as human beings who both bleed from scratches from the olive tree branches, and reddened cheeks from too much exposure to the sun.
But here, in Tel Aviv, I was rushing to meet a group of people from Combatants for Peace, a group started by former Israeli soldiers and former Palestinian militants. At the bus station, I was to look for the bus that would take me and other participants into the West Bank to pick olives with Palestinian farmers.
I arrived at the station searching for my party. Although public buses do not run in Tel Aviv on Shabbat, from the small crowds of people clumped in various parts of the parking lot, it was obvious that on Saturdays the bus station is used as a meeting point for tourist groups. Buses with signs in the windshield saying, "Day-Trip to Nazareth" and "Jerusalem Tours" were parked in the lot, khaki clad tourists with hats, cameras and day packs were milling about.
Crossing another parking lot, I saw a different crowd of people, younger, sleepy-eyed people. It was the guy wearing the Che Guevara t-shirt, however, that indicated to me this was the group I came to meet. Sure enough, I asked a woman, "what group is this?" To which she replied, "the olive picking group."
Ten minutes later two buses arrived for two bus loads of Israelis, a few Americans and Australians headed for the West Bank.
We stopped in Jerusalem on the way for a bathroom break and to meet the other bus departing from Jerusalem. Shortly after that, we were on our way East through Jerusalem and South toward Hebron. Easily, we passed through a check point, driving alongside the separation wall, everyone in the bus looked out the window, some seeing the gray mass for the first time, others scanning the view for changes and additions to the gradual separation of Israel from the West Bank.
We drove South, past Hebron for maybe fifteen minutes when we pulled over to the side of the road near a place called Soussiya. Soussiya is a small village made up of a few rows of long tents, a small windmill that generates two hours of electricity per day, and a grove of olive trees. The residents of Soussiya live between a settlement and an Israeli military base.
Soussiya was not always located where it is today. The people of Soussiya were not originally from the West Bank. In 1948 they were expelled from their homes in Arad, south of Soussiya. They were relocated to Old Soussiya, up the road. After the 67' War, Old Soussiya was destroyed and replaced with a Jewish settlement. The Soussiya of today is the land, which the family we helped harvest olives has managed to hang onto despite ever-encroaching settlements and settler farming projects. The inhabitants of Soussiya are members of the same extended family. The rest of the family lives in a nearby city called Atta. Family from Atta come to Soussiya to help pick the olives from trees they've plucked green and black varieties since the 1800s.
It is not that the family of Soussiya and Atta have so many olive trees that they cannot manage the harvest on their own. This is not why we joined them under the hot sun and the cool breeze blowing in the Southwestern part of the West Bank today. Rather, we helped them because last year they were unable to harvest their trees.
The edge of the Soussiya olive grove rests at the foothills of a rocky-earth incline at the outskirts of a Jewish settlement. In years past, the settlers, who refuse to recognize that these people, the Palestinian residents of Soussiya own this land and therefore have the right to reap the harvest of their property, have attacked the children and mothers and fathers of Soussiya. They throw rocks, they threaten with weapons and the soldiers who are stationed in the area are obligated to protect the settlers-- the instigators, not the Palestinians. In the event that there are clashes between the two peoples, the soldiers arrest Palestinians if they react. Last year the people of Soussiya let the olives from their trees drop to the ground to bake in the bright sun. Between the settlers, the soldiers and the potential for violence, it was determined that the olives would not be harvested.
Combatants for Peace, Ta'ayush and Peace Now-- two Israeli-Palestinian peace groups and one Israeli, were informed of this village and others in a similar situation and organized a remedy the problem. Prearranged with the army, the soldiers are informed when groups are traveling to the West Bank to work with the Palestinians, this way they are present if and when settlers appear to meddle and intimidate the Palestinians.
By sending Israelis and internationals into the West Bank to pick olives with the Palestinians, the soldiers are obligated to protect the visiting Israelis, tourists and observers. Without us, they may not show up at all, leaving the Palestinians at the mercy of the settlers and each side's emotional and physical response to the other.
We started picking from the trees close to the highway. We were instructed to run our hands down the olive-laden branches, milking olives from the tree. The green, black and purplish orbs fell from the trees onto plastic tarps below and into plastic bags we attached to the belt loops of our pants. To get the olives at the top someone climbed into the center of the tree, coaxing the fruit from the wood. The steady pit-pat of olives falling to the ground became fainter and fainter as we successfully completed harvesting olives from one tree after another.
We moved to the center of the grove, buckets, tarps and USAID sacks following us. Smiles and basic questions like, "where are you from? how old are you? what do you study? are you Israeli?" helped us to establish a friendship with our hosts. It was strange to explain that I am American and Jewish.
"You are American and you are Jewish?" asked Amran, the spokesperson of the family.
"Yes," I replied, "I am American and I am Jewish."
Amran turned to his cousins and said, "yahoud, yahoud, fil America."
"Jew, Jew, from America."
Eventually, we reached the trees closest to th settlement and we continued to pick the olives. We started giggling at the abrasive braying of the village's donkeys on the hillside to our right.
On the hillside above us, fifty yards from where we were, a group of men and boys dressed in white appeared,tzitzit waving on the wind.
Settlers wearing white for Shabbat.
After the settlers, two border policemen, Magav, appeared with them. They wore helmets and batons stuck out from their hips. They positioned themselves between the settlers and us. We continued to drop olives into buckets, onto tarps, into bags.
The settlers stood there and watched.
After awhile they disappeared back up the hillside, the soldiers following behind them. We finished harvesting from the trees.
Heading toward the village, we came to the final group of trees, thicker trees, older trees whose olives were more obscure amongst the thick branches with abundant leaves. The family offered us sage tea sweetened with sugar. We sat together, the men smoking argileh, all of us drinking the sweet, sweet refreshing beverage. After that we continued the harvest until lunch arrived on the terraced land above us.
Together we sat on black tarps spread on the rocky soil with sharp, dried nettle branches shooting from the earth, surrounded by five olive trees and the speckled shade they offered. We at roasted chicken, rice, lentils, pita and hummus. The family joined us, small children sitting amongst our group enjoying the attention of strangers and the food.
An elder man of the family stood before us and thanked us for helping. This is when he told us the history of his family, how they live in nearby Atta and Soussiya. How unless they live on their land where the olive trees grow, they'll lose their livelihood to settler vineyards and greenhouses.
Shortly after lunch it was time to head back to Tel Aviv. We said farewell to our hosts, each side thanking the other. The Palestinians for our support and us for their giving us a way, or at least a feeling that we can and are doing something to help.
Waving to Amran and his cousin Yusuf from behind the tinted window of the bus, I felt acutely aware that I was about to move back from one reality to another. Inside, I also felt contentment, and a subtle calming peace settle over me. Perhaps from spending a day outside, amidst the branches and leaves of olive trees, perhaps from connecting in a small way with the people of Palestine who haunt my thoughts when I sit at Tel Aviv cafes and stroll through malls and boutiques, and jog along the nearby shores of the Mediterranean Sea. I am utterly baffledy by the urban, modern life I live in Tel Aviv, and the life that the farmers and shepherds of Palestine live not so far away.
Generally, Israelis are a boisterous people and culture. It is part of what is endearing and delightful about being here. Today though, in the olive grove of Soussiya, a solemnity pervaded the hours of the harvest. I can't imagine what it felt like for my Israeli friends to be there. What were their thoughts and feelings? What fears did they have to overcome to get on a bus to the West Bank? What hopes do they have? What do they see as their role in healing the wounds of so many decades? What can come of milking olives from the trees?
And our Palestinian friends. Does it help that they experience Israelis other than settlers and soldiers? Does it give them hope? Does it lessen the pain and hopelessness? I believe it does perhaps in small part.
For the first time in the eight months I have spent in Israel and the West Bank, I think I glimpsed what peace could be like here. It will come from a shared respect for each other. It will come from Israelis helping Palestinians pick olives, perhaps to ease the inherited guilt and confusion of those who are willing and able to accept it. It will come from Israelis and Palestinians experiencing each other as human beings who both bleed from scratches from the olive tree branches, and reddened cheeks from too much exposure to the sun.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Getting Over the Chosen Thing
Jews returned to Eretz Israel beginning in the mid-19th century when a group of rabbis in Russia began espousing the Jewish right to return to the land of the ancestors, promised to the Nation of Israel by God. Centuries of living as a diaspora would come to an end if the Jews returned in great enough numbers. And the Jews had to, they had to escape inquisition, pogroms, prejudice, inequality and segregation from each of the societies to which they dispersed since 132 A.C.E. when the Romans defeated the Jewish uprising and destroyed the Second Temple.
Sixty years ago, the high rises, cafes, boulevards, fashion, billboards, buses and convenient stores I see today in Israel were not here. Sixty years ago the Jews who moved here in the wake of the Holocaust were working the land on kibbutzim, creating the miracle of Ben Gurion's vision of blooming deserts, a thriving state and safe haven for Jews whose self-sustainability as a self-determined nation with territory was confirmed to be the only defense against the world's cruelty to the Jews. In the face of challenge to this realized dream, Jewish text and history has reminded the world that God designated the Jews as the Chosen People,a light among nations.
What a complex this has created.
Sizable migrations of Jews came in the late nineteenth century and the early 20th century. Finally, the largest numbers arrived on the shores of soon-to-be Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Starvation, humiliation, destitution, grief and loss united the Jews from all over Europe as they arrived to create a new nation, built on the desert sands and swamps.
Hebrew was reinstated as the common language of the Jews, a project that began with Herzl's Zionism in the late 19th century, and cultural Zionist Ah'ad Ha'am. A new Jewish culture was born in a land both familiar and foreign. Characteristics of the nascent Israeli identity were forming-- the sabra, the soldier, the innovative desert farmer. These pioneers, these Halutzim, mostly hailing from Eastern Europe, with a smattering of emboldened American Jews populated the land in the late 1940s. Iraqi, Moroccan, Algerian, Iranian, Yemeni Jews joined their Jewish brothers and sisters in the 1950s. The Ethiopians came later. The Jewish Nation had a firm grasp to the land, the State of Israel.
Facing a conflicted world on the legitimacy of the Jewish State, a hostile and shamed Arab world, and the long tradition of anti-Semitism, the first Israelis were united in the face of their adversaries, with firm conviction of their right to be here as God's Chosen People, apart from all the rest. Or were they united?
Survivors of the Holocaust arrived on the shores of Israel when it was the British Mandate of Palestine to discover disgusted Israeli counterparts. The survivors stories served as a reminder of Jewish feebleness and the children of modern-Israel had established a society exactly opposite to that of the victimized Jews of Europe. Another example, the regularly kassam-bombarded city of Tsderot near Gaza was created by Iraqi and Moroccan immigrants starting in 1952. They left their homes behind at the invitation of Israel, to come as Jews to live in the Jewish State. They did not find a welcoming population. The communities who had already set up thriving kibbutzim refused to assist the newcomers and so they had to build from sand, wind and nothing, a viable habitat. And so they did, without the help of their Jewish neighbors.
True, nowhere in the world and certainly not the Middle Eastern world does one find a society so open, dynamic, controversial, challenging and constantly stirring with new ways to survive extistentially and basically across socioeconomic lines. Nowhere in the world do you have to guard your spot in line to get on the bus by spreading your legs and arms as wide as possible in order to block the door from the 15 people behind you who think they should get on before you, and end up befriending the very person who you battled, ten minutes later, when they sit beside you. But also, nowhere in the world do you find fours cars pulled over on the side of the road trying to help a stranger haul his SUV out of the foothill of a sand dune. And of course, amongst four Israeli vehicles, there is enough rope and other gadgets necessary to accomplish such a feat.
Fortunately, I haven't been in Israel during a time of war. However, I imagine that in times of crisis, the country and its Jewish-Israeli citizens stand as one united nation in protection of what the Jewish people dreamed of for centuries. I have heard stories from the first Gulf War when young children would gather at each other's homes for school lessons because the schools were closed for fear of bombings. These are the times when hearts of mothers and fathers of each and every Israeli family with a son or daughter in the army beat a little faster, breathing more shallow in usual, for fear of the safety of their children's lives. In these times the playing field is leveled and there simply exists Israeli, Israel versus the world.
But on a normal day, in normal times, it is clear that Israel and the people in it are just as good, bad and indifferent as the rest of the world. The society is astonishingly divided. It is divided by color, by Ashkenazim versus Sephardim, between Jew and Arab, rich and poor, North and Center, religious and secular. There's this one population of the country with the stigma of being arsim (for the boys) and frehot (for the girls). Think Greasers, mafia-types who are made fun of for their dress and language style and considered socially at odds with the rest of society.
And why is this so vexing? Why is this division within diversity something that bothers me? It's not as if the rest of the world's countries' societies aren't also broken up, segregated, at odds with each other and varied.
On other days I see it as something miraculous. Jews from France, Ethiopia, Cyprus, Greece, the States, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina, Canada...a United Nations of Jewry gathered together in this land because it is the Jewish State.
(And these are the days where I'm not contemplating the other elephant in the living room, the occupation.)
It's not like Israel is the only country whose education system is becoming more and more shoddy, with teachers who are severely underpaid. It's not as though more people in other countries have more interest in the outcome of politics than they do here. Certainly, Israel isn't the only country who values plastic surgery, stilettos and flat screen televisions more than picking up trash, saving electricity and organic produce. So why am I so judgmental and angry on some days? Why am I so disappointed in this place on such a regular basis?
I think I suffer from "The Chosen Complex".
Jewish history teaches that God promised unto Abraham a nation of people as numerous as there are stars in the heavens. These people who proclaimed faith to one and only one God were proclaimed the Chosen People, chosen to receive the Torah, to receive the "Promised Land", and to serve and be a light among nations.
Are we really the Chosen? Walk the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa. Try to buy a falafel, wait your turn in line for security, or deal with customer service. Good luck ordering in a timely fashion, good luck not getting pushed three people behind and fending for your life from flinging bags and other personal paraphernalia, and good luck trying to hang onto your cordiality with strangers and eventually accept that you too will speak to someone as though they are a complete idiot and the only way to get through to them is in fact to use a firm voice most people would consider harsh, rude and out of line.
And please, don't believe that those who are studying Torah every day, so intimate with the teachings of God and the Sages, are any more considerate in their daily interactions in the public space. I didn't know I missed chivalry until I came to this country and found men with Orthodox-indicating accoutrements so afraid of coming into physical proximity with women that doors have shut in my face when I'm carrying three too many bags from one bus stop or train station to the next and simply keeping one's hand on the glass for an extra 2 seconds could've really helped out a girl-in-need. Are we not all made in God's image? Am I so evil for having breasts and a vagina and/or he so helpless in the face of his animalistic carnal character that such a courtesy as holding the door open cannot be offered? Are the Chosen so powerless to their own human flaws that they cannot be trusted to work on those things? Sharpen the awareness and practice of limits?
There's so much expectation when one is Chosen to be a light among nations. I get this idea that these people shouldn't litter and shouldn't have an army that is aggressive and uses torture, creates nuclear weapons and lies about them, or have politicians involved in sex scandals. Excuse me for expecting the Chosen to live up to their own standard and fundamental principles of Oneness as expressed in the Shema, and instead focusing on itself.
I expect the Chosen to figure what the nation-state of the Chosen stands for-- exactly. Is it: "fuck the world and its anti-Semitism at all costs we'll defend and survive?" Or, is it about creating a place in the world with a vision for what the world could be if we all moved from the heart instead of the unchecked and unhealed ego and voracious and insatiable genitals? I wish it were the latter.
What happens when the Chosen behave as all the rest and still claim to be the Chosen? Israel 2007, that's what happens. Big balagan.
Sixty years ago, the high rises, cafes, boulevards, fashion, billboards, buses and convenient stores I see today in Israel were not here. Sixty years ago the Jews who moved here in the wake of the Holocaust were working the land on kibbutzim, creating the miracle of Ben Gurion's vision of blooming deserts, a thriving state and safe haven for Jews whose self-sustainability as a self-determined nation with territory was confirmed to be the only defense against the world's cruelty to the Jews. In the face of challenge to this realized dream, Jewish text and history has reminded the world that God designated the Jews as the Chosen People,a light among nations.
What a complex this has created.
Sizable migrations of Jews came in the late nineteenth century and the early 20th century. Finally, the largest numbers arrived on the shores of soon-to-be Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Starvation, humiliation, destitution, grief and loss united the Jews from all over Europe as they arrived to create a new nation, built on the desert sands and swamps.
Hebrew was reinstated as the common language of the Jews, a project that began with Herzl's Zionism in the late 19th century, and cultural Zionist Ah'ad Ha'am. A new Jewish culture was born in a land both familiar and foreign. Characteristics of the nascent Israeli identity were forming-- the sabra, the soldier, the innovative desert farmer. These pioneers, these Halutzim, mostly hailing from Eastern Europe, with a smattering of emboldened American Jews populated the land in the late 1940s. Iraqi, Moroccan, Algerian, Iranian, Yemeni Jews joined their Jewish brothers and sisters in the 1950s. The Ethiopians came later. The Jewish Nation had a firm grasp to the land, the State of Israel.
Facing a conflicted world on the legitimacy of the Jewish State, a hostile and shamed Arab world, and the long tradition of anti-Semitism, the first Israelis were united in the face of their adversaries, with firm conviction of their right to be here as God's Chosen People, apart from all the rest. Or were they united?
Survivors of the Holocaust arrived on the shores of Israel when it was the British Mandate of Palestine to discover disgusted Israeli counterparts. The survivors stories served as a reminder of Jewish feebleness and the children of modern-Israel had established a society exactly opposite to that of the victimized Jews of Europe. Another example, the regularly kassam-bombarded city of Tsderot near Gaza was created by Iraqi and Moroccan immigrants starting in 1952. They left their homes behind at the invitation of Israel, to come as Jews to live in the Jewish State. They did not find a welcoming population. The communities who had already set up thriving kibbutzim refused to assist the newcomers and so they had to build from sand, wind and nothing, a viable habitat. And so they did, without the help of their Jewish neighbors.
True, nowhere in the world and certainly not the Middle Eastern world does one find a society so open, dynamic, controversial, challenging and constantly stirring with new ways to survive extistentially and basically across socioeconomic lines. Nowhere in the world do you have to guard your spot in line to get on the bus by spreading your legs and arms as wide as possible in order to block the door from the 15 people behind you who think they should get on before you, and end up befriending the very person who you battled, ten minutes later, when they sit beside you. But also, nowhere in the world do you find fours cars pulled over on the side of the road trying to help a stranger haul his SUV out of the foothill of a sand dune. And of course, amongst four Israeli vehicles, there is enough rope and other gadgets necessary to accomplish such a feat.
Fortunately, I haven't been in Israel during a time of war. However, I imagine that in times of crisis, the country and its Jewish-Israeli citizens stand as one united nation in protection of what the Jewish people dreamed of for centuries. I have heard stories from the first Gulf War when young children would gather at each other's homes for school lessons because the schools were closed for fear of bombings. These are the times when hearts of mothers and fathers of each and every Israeli family with a son or daughter in the army beat a little faster, breathing more shallow in usual, for fear of the safety of their children's lives. In these times the playing field is leveled and there simply exists Israeli, Israel versus the world.
But on a normal day, in normal times, it is clear that Israel and the people in it are just as good, bad and indifferent as the rest of the world. The society is astonishingly divided. It is divided by color, by Ashkenazim versus Sephardim, between Jew and Arab, rich and poor, North and Center, religious and secular. There's this one population of the country with the stigma of being arsim (for the boys) and frehot (for the girls). Think Greasers, mafia-types who are made fun of for their dress and language style and considered socially at odds with the rest of society.
And why is this so vexing? Why is this division within diversity something that bothers me? It's not as if the rest of the world's countries' societies aren't also broken up, segregated, at odds with each other and varied.
On other days I see it as something miraculous. Jews from France, Ethiopia, Cyprus, Greece, the States, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina, Canada...a United Nations of Jewry gathered together in this land because it is the Jewish State.
(And these are the days where I'm not contemplating the other elephant in the living room, the occupation.)
It's not like Israel is the only country whose education system is becoming more and more shoddy, with teachers who are severely underpaid. It's not as though more people in other countries have more interest in the outcome of politics than they do here. Certainly, Israel isn't the only country who values plastic surgery, stilettos and flat screen televisions more than picking up trash, saving electricity and organic produce. So why am I so judgmental and angry on some days? Why am I so disappointed in this place on such a regular basis?
I think I suffer from "The Chosen Complex".
Jewish history teaches that God promised unto Abraham a nation of people as numerous as there are stars in the heavens. These people who proclaimed faith to one and only one God were proclaimed the Chosen People, chosen to receive the Torah, to receive the "Promised Land", and to serve and be a light among nations.
Are we really the Chosen? Walk the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa. Try to buy a falafel, wait your turn in line for security, or deal with customer service. Good luck ordering in a timely fashion, good luck not getting pushed three people behind and fending for your life from flinging bags and other personal paraphernalia, and good luck trying to hang onto your cordiality with strangers and eventually accept that you too will speak to someone as though they are a complete idiot and the only way to get through to them is in fact to use a firm voice most people would consider harsh, rude and out of line.
And please, don't believe that those who are studying Torah every day, so intimate with the teachings of God and the Sages, are any more considerate in their daily interactions in the public space. I didn't know I missed chivalry until I came to this country and found men with Orthodox-indicating accoutrements so afraid of coming into physical proximity with women that doors have shut in my face when I'm carrying three too many bags from one bus stop or train station to the next and simply keeping one's hand on the glass for an extra 2 seconds could've really helped out a girl-in-need. Are we not all made in God's image? Am I so evil for having breasts and a vagina and/or he so helpless in the face of his animalistic carnal character that such a courtesy as holding the door open cannot be offered? Are the Chosen so powerless to their own human flaws that they cannot be trusted to work on those things? Sharpen the awareness and practice of limits?
There's so much expectation when one is Chosen to be a light among nations. I get this idea that these people shouldn't litter and shouldn't have an army that is aggressive and uses torture, creates nuclear weapons and lies about them, or have politicians involved in sex scandals. Excuse me for expecting the Chosen to live up to their own standard and fundamental principles of Oneness as expressed in the Shema, and instead focusing on itself.
I expect the Chosen to figure what the nation-state of the Chosen stands for-- exactly. Is it: "fuck the world and its anti-Semitism at all costs we'll defend and survive?" Or, is it about creating a place in the world with a vision for what the world could be if we all moved from the heart instead of the unchecked and unhealed ego and voracious and insatiable genitals? I wish it were the latter.
What happens when the Chosen behave as all the rest and still claim to be the Chosen? Israel 2007, that's what happens. Big balagan.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Bedouin Tragedy
Yesterday in the West Bank Bedouin village, Arab al-Jahaleen, a 15-year-old boy named Khaled was killed by a speeding garbage truck. Khaled was on the edge of the road collecting scrap metal and other discarded materials useful in constructing the ramshackle homes his community lives in, when the driver struck and killed him. The road upon which he scrambled for these materials divides his village from the nearby Israeli dump.
Fearing for his life in retaliation for the boy whose brains had been splattered across the road, once the truck stopped the driver got out and started to run. In the moments after the incident took place, the children threw rocks at the truck. As more villagers discovered what happened, the truck was set aflame.
Volunteers from Rabbis for Human Rights were playing with the children of this village, joining a German-NGO sponsored summer camp. "Earlier that morning I had been playing basketball with that boy, and then he was dead," said an eyewitness volunteer to the incident, bewildered by what he had seen.
Israeli police arrived at the scene shortly after the incident. The abandoned Israeli garbage truck remained in the road, burning. Police broke up the enraged group of people. Burial preparations for Khaled began immediately. For at least the next two days, the summer camp will be closed to honor the memory of this young man's death.
Whether or not the driver will be held responsible for this crime is unknown.
Bedouins in Israel suffer the gamut of Israeli occupation casualties. House demolitions, lack of electricity, water, employment, lack of access to health care and education are but a few of the hardships which plague these traditionally nomadic people. Relocated time and again, al-Jahaleen is one example of Israel's ill-treatment of the Bedouins, giving them no other option but to make a life surrounded by garbage.
More Israelis and the international community need to be made aware of the sub par life Bedouins are forced to live under the Israeli government's inhumane policies toward these people. It is impossible to imagine a true negotiated peace in which injustices without recourse occur daily-- against Bedouins, Palestinians and Israelis as well.
Rocks and fire do not subsitute for legal process. Although the life of a fifteen-year-old boy could never be compensated for, it is unacceptable that culpability and the appropriate punishment for this crime will go unmeted. It behooves all members of a society to enforce its government's commitment to democracy. Therefore it is the responsiblity of the people to become aware of these tragic incidents that happen too frequently, and to demand justice.
Fearing for his life in retaliation for the boy whose brains had been splattered across the road, once the truck stopped the driver got out and started to run. In the moments after the incident took place, the children threw rocks at the truck. As more villagers discovered what happened, the truck was set aflame.
Volunteers from Rabbis for Human Rights were playing with the children of this village, joining a German-NGO sponsored summer camp. "Earlier that morning I had been playing basketball with that boy, and then he was dead," said an eyewitness volunteer to the incident, bewildered by what he had seen.
Israeli police arrived at the scene shortly after the incident. The abandoned Israeli garbage truck remained in the road, burning. Police broke up the enraged group of people. Burial preparations for Khaled began immediately. For at least the next two days, the summer camp will be closed to honor the memory of this young man's death.
Whether or not the driver will be held responsible for this crime is unknown.
Bedouins in Israel suffer the gamut of Israeli occupation casualties. House demolitions, lack of electricity, water, employment, lack of access to health care and education are but a few of the hardships which plague these traditionally nomadic people. Relocated time and again, al-Jahaleen is one example of Israel's ill-treatment of the Bedouins, giving them no other option but to make a life surrounded by garbage.
More Israelis and the international community need to be made aware of the sub par life Bedouins are forced to live under the Israeli government's inhumane policies toward these people. It is impossible to imagine a true negotiated peace in which injustices without recourse occur daily-- against Bedouins, Palestinians and Israelis as well.
Rocks and fire do not subsitute for legal process. Although the life of a fifteen-year-old boy could never be compensated for, it is unacceptable that culpability and the appropriate punishment for this crime will go unmeted. It behooves all members of a society to enforce its government's commitment to democracy. Therefore it is the responsiblity of the people to become aware of these tragic incidents that happen too frequently, and to demand justice.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Yerushalayim Shel Kulam I
Wednesday night before the first day of summer, Eitan came to Jerusalem to visit me and to meet his brother. Waiting in front of the Congress Center at the gates of Jerusalem, I awaited Eitan’s call and looked forward to a few hours of walking the streets with company, streets I usually walk alone.
Walking up and down Ben Yehuda and Jaffa Streets, Eitan remarked at the very English-speaking and touristy West Jerusalem. The streets are filled with Jewish youth from all over the English-speaking world especially. In my opinion, only because this is Israel are there so many teenagers living, studying, working and visiting a country so far from home. Otherwise, I doubt their parents would give permission for travel and stay elsewhere in the Middle East. But this aspect of Jerusalem is only one of many that makes the city a universe of its own. One of the most contested and holiest places on Earth, each neighborhood in West Jerusalem, let’s forget East Jerusalem for now, teems with different Jewish communities and their corresponding lifestyles.
Primarily, I know Jerusalem as far as my feet can take me, and wherever different errands have forced me to explore. The center of West Jerusalem is surrounded by beautiful hotels and obscure hostels, clothing and shoe stores, and the requisite money change stations. There are several apartment buildings interspersed throughout the area although I believe most of them are rented out temporarily to high paying Jewish tourists who opt for a homestead instead of a hotel stay.
At the top of Ben Yehuda heading left, there is a neighborhood called, Rechavia. Here the apartment prices are on par with those of San Francisco and Manhattan, grocery stores sell basic necessities for exorbitant, high-profit yielding prices. Here many units are also vacant most of the year, awaiting their American, Australian or British owners arrival for High Holidays or other chagim (holidays). Or, they are filled with the religious Zionist children of the owners, young people in their twenties who have made aliyah to populate the Jewish State, to study Torah and to raise future Israelis.
Past Rechavia at the bottom of King George Street, if you follow the road past Liberty Park and onto what looks like a country road, eventually you end up in the German Colony, which boasts the popular café and restaurant-laden street, Emek Refaim. Not much,but somewhat more affordable and bohemian than Rehavia, the German Colony hosts natives, ex-pats, and tourists for long or short stays as well.
Moving back up King George Street, towards the gates of Jerusalem, a left on Aleppo Street brings you to a centuries old market, Mahane Yehuda. The open market of open markets. I am not sure how one ever chooses the best fruit vendor, nut seller, fish monger, hummus and cheese manufacturer, butcher, baker, chocolate and candy seller, olive curer or café. Aleppo borders one side of Mahane Yehuda and Jaffa Street on the other.
Jaffa Street in the direction away from Ben Yehuda eventually leads to the Central Bus Station across from which is the Congress building. Near to the bus station, approximately ten to fifteen minutes walk away from the Bus Station, with your back to the center of town, you come to what I discovered to be the administrative part of town. The education ministry, the national security agency, the tax authority, social security, and various banks line the main boulevard of Kanfei Nesharim. On either side of this thoroughfare, neighborhoods with conservatively dressed men and women indicate that the area is more on the religious side of the lifestyle spectrum.
However, the truly religious population of Jerusalem, the community the newspapers describe as the ultra-Orthodox extremists, fill the streets, homes and shops of Mea Shea'rim. Here you find men with long peis (locks of hair-- uncut sideburns), black hats, tzitzit (prayer fringes) hanging from their sides, kippot (head coverings), and women and children dressed from neck to waist, shoulder to wrist, past the knees. Even little girls wear stockings beneath long skirts throughout the year. Here in Mea Shea'rim, the night before the first day of summer I witnessed yet another aspect of Israel wherein one questions the existence of sanity, normalcy, and whether or not in Jerusalem, in fact, one sometimes walks into veritable time warps.
Eitan and I had a few hours together before his brother called to be picked up. Once we got the call we headed to the bus stop where he asked to be fetched and after toward the Old City to drop me off at my hostel before the doors locked at midnight. Further along Jaffa Street leads you to the walls of the Old City, specifically the Arab shouk and the Jewish Quarter, via Jaffa Gate. Earlier when I directed Eitan to the Center, I told him to drive down Jaffa Street, as far as I knew that was the quickest way to get where we needed to go. When Eitan was about to make the turn again to Jaffa Street his brother told him not to -- that route is for buses and taxis only. Sheepishly, I apologized for the earlier mistake, using as my excuse that I don’t drive in Jerusalem, how was I to know? Instead of turning right, Eitan stayed straight on the road.
Trying to wend our way back in the direction of the Old City, we found ourselves in the streets of Mea Shea'rim. Parts of this neighborhood are made up of narrow winding streets with two and three story Jerusalem stone buildings looming above, with balconies creating an almost canopy above head. Twisting and turning, we found we couldn’t get through the neighborhood on this night. The streets were filled with fire. Barricades of trash set aflame formed blockades, dumpsters filled with fire peeking over the rims, tires burning, the stench of rubber and burnt trash filled the air. Those responsible for this sickening mess were crowds of young and some middle-aged men standing around in their black hats and suits, peis and tzizit hanging.
Eitan tried to drive the wrong way down a one-way street, the only option because the road in front of us had white trash bags carefully placed in a flaming line to inhibit traffic from passing through. The road had no outlet and we had to reverse up the narrow street. The nose of the car peeked out from the small junction at the same time a group of young men started running in our direction, followed shortly after by a small explosion.
I didn’t really understand what I was seeing. I think I asked why and at some point, Eitan’s brother Yaakov explained they were protesting. These teenage boys claiming to live by the word of the Merciful and Compassionate God, Creator of the Universe and all beings within, were protesting against the next day’s gay pride parade. Earlier in the week these same groups of men had placed a fake bomb on a Jerusalem bus accompanied with a note that if the pride parade took place, there would be a real explosive as retribution. Disgust, shame,disappointment-- these are some of my immediate feelings in reaction to what was before my eyes.
Also, I found my mind thinking about the Holocaust. How six million Jews were killed but also six million others, including homosexuals, who were persecuted simply for being who they were, just as were the Jews. I thought of the hypocrisy, the hatred, the misplaced energy, the pollution rising into the sky, the ignorance, the arrogance and the plain stupidity of this act of protest. Instead of seeing this community as a symbol of tradition and mystique, all around me I could only see pimply-faced boys who are sex deprived and frustrated because all they do is study Talmud and pray every day. My mind ran through the rumors of outrageous rates of prostitution and domestic violence in this neighborhood. These thoughts clashing with images of the day I spent here ten years ago to shop for tokens of Jewish ritual, tallitot (prayer shawls), where I bought tefillin (leather prayer straps) for my younger brother, and tasted fresh, delicious chocolate-filled rugelach.
I thought to myself, is this what the founders and fighters of Israel wanted to establish? A land in which intolerance and xenophobia plagues the people who claim to be closest to God and keepers of the Jewish covenant with God?
I snapped out of my thoughts when I heard Eitan slam his hand into the steering wheel out of frustration. “I wish I knew what these people are called so I can know who to be mad at,” he exclaimed. Seconds before, young boys threw rocks at the taxi in front of us, the taxi that we followed to get out of this despicable mess.
Reaching the perimeter of Mea She'arim, soldiers and police were stationed with trucks, guns, and riot gear in case the protestors seeped out of their quarters to disturb the peace of the rest of the city. Finally out of the fray, Eitan drove onto the Highway 1. I noticed to my left, the quiet and deserted night streets of East Jerusalem. Barely making curfew, Eitan and Yaakov walked with me into the Old City walls to make sure I arrived at the hostel on time.
Eitan, Yaakov and I were supposed to have a discussion about contentious Jewish issues like who is a Jew and the forced, because it is the only recognized process in Israel, Orthodox conversion process. After a few minutes of scattered shared thoughts, another girl staying at the hostel who was smoking outside went inside, the door slammed shut and locked behind her. Jumping up to get her to open it up, the young woman on duty nearly refused my entrance for breaking curfew by five minutes. I convinced her to let me in explaining the ordeal I had just witnessed, and the delay it caused in getting back in time. She agreed to let me in, held the gate open while I said good night to Eitan and Yaakov, and scolded me for thinking I could disrespect the curfew.
I have to explain this hostel. It’s free, it’s in the Jewish Quarter, it’s called the Heritage House. The Heritage House website advertises the facility as a safe and free alternative to Arab hostels for Jewish travelers in Jerusalem. You can stay for a day, a week, a month or many months for that matter, as long as you are Jewish and there’s an open bed. The hostel opens from eight to nine a.m. and five p.m. until midnight. A 24-year-old religious woman by the name of Chaya oversees the women’s hostel, her two-year-old son, Pinchas, in tow wherever she goes.
At Heritage House, the downstairs common area is filled with books about Judaism -- Orthodox Judaism. Volumes justifying the diversified tasks of men and women as stated in the Torah and interpreted by centuries of rabbis and religious scholars. Chaya and her madrichim are responsible for encouraging guests to attend yeshiva, transportation provided, to learn more about being Jewish. Mention of God finds its way into every conversation. Some girls are there to study. Some, like me, are working on theses or doing research, or simply traveling during the summer.
Part of me finds Heritage House comforting and safe. On Thursday nights, the girls bake challah. It is peaceful behind the Old City Walls. The location allows me to walk to work, strolling by the Kotel (Western Wall) and through the Muslim Quarter each morning, past groups of tourists reenacting the Stations of the Cross on Via Dolorosa. So many worlds colliding within so few square feet. Moreover, for someone trying to make her funds stretch as far and long as possible, the price is right at Heritage House.
The other part of me feels absolutely hypocritical for accepting the kindness and ducking the proselytizing. This part of me also wants to rip my hair out when I find myself on the four nights that I’ve stayed there, explaining to the staff that Arabs are not a homogeneous people who all want the Jewish people to perish. Or, when I mentioned that I was going to Amman for a conference on promoting peace through dialogue and I received a blank look followed by the question, “where is Amman?”
On the flipside, I get insight into one strand of religious community in Jerusalem. From my experience so far, I see that it is a community working to live the word of God but from a place of fear and anxiety in which the rest of the world poses a threat to the Jewish people. It helps me to understand more dynamics of the conflict here. I gather that the leaders of this community, who are also in places of political power and influence, use their sanctimonious authority to keep status quo, putting blockades up to visions of peace where two different yet neighboring societies can work out the details of coexistence. This is the community that takes young people on tours of Hebron to visit settlements, the continuing expansion of which is a major contributing factor to justification for violence on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. (Not to mention, the International Court of Justice has ruled these settlements illegal according to international law, and Israel's government continues to contradict itself by claiming to stop building settlements as a gesture of peace, when settlements continue to appear within the bounds of greater Jerusalem.) These are the community leaders, not condoning the acts of protest perpetrated by the men and women of Mea Shea'rim, but neither doing anything to teach why damaging public property and air with burning tires and trash disrespects the Earth and therefore the God they believe created it.
In many ways they use the faith and spiritual intentions of their followers to perpetuate, in my view, a very unholy and sacrilege approach to living. They are using Judaism, a mechanism through which one may attempt to satisfy the soul’s yearning for unity with the divine, to conquer and divide.
While spending evenings with young women whom I view as indoctrinated with holy propaganda, not much different than the young boys in the madrasahs of Pakistan and Indonesia, for example, I try to gain their trust and ask them to see through a different lens. And honestly, I’m curious about them too. To know how this very small world in which they choose to exist seems to satisfy their heart’s desires. I try not to sit in judgment. All of the thoughts I’ve shared in the past few paragraphs, I try to put aside in order to have a dialogue about Jews, Palestinians, Israel, God, and our roles in this place called Israel and Palestine.
Walking up and down Ben Yehuda and Jaffa Streets, Eitan remarked at the very English-speaking and touristy West Jerusalem. The streets are filled with Jewish youth from all over the English-speaking world especially. In my opinion, only because this is Israel are there so many teenagers living, studying, working and visiting a country so far from home. Otherwise, I doubt their parents would give permission for travel and stay elsewhere in the Middle East. But this aspect of Jerusalem is only one of many that makes the city a universe of its own. One of the most contested and holiest places on Earth, each neighborhood in West Jerusalem, let’s forget East Jerusalem for now, teems with different Jewish communities and their corresponding lifestyles.
Primarily, I know Jerusalem as far as my feet can take me, and wherever different errands have forced me to explore. The center of West Jerusalem is surrounded by beautiful hotels and obscure hostels, clothing and shoe stores, and the requisite money change stations. There are several apartment buildings interspersed throughout the area although I believe most of them are rented out temporarily to high paying Jewish tourists who opt for a homestead instead of a hotel stay.
At the top of Ben Yehuda heading left, there is a neighborhood called, Rechavia. Here the apartment prices are on par with those of San Francisco and Manhattan, grocery stores sell basic necessities for exorbitant, high-profit yielding prices. Here many units are also vacant most of the year, awaiting their American, Australian or British owners arrival for High Holidays or other chagim (holidays). Or, they are filled with the religious Zionist children of the owners, young people in their twenties who have made aliyah to populate the Jewish State, to study Torah and to raise future Israelis.
Past Rechavia at the bottom of King George Street, if you follow the road past Liberty Park and onto what looks like a country road, eventually you end up in the German Colony, which boasts the popular café and restaurant-laden street, Emek Refaim. Not much,but somewhat more affordable and bohemian than Rehavia, the German Colony hosts natives, ex-pats, and tourists for long or short stays as well.
Moving back up King George Street, towards the gates of Jerusalem, a left on Aleppo Street brings you to a centuries old market, Mahane Yehuda. The open market of open markets. I am not sure how one ever chooses the best fruit vendor, nut seller, fish monger, hummus and cheese manufacturer, butcher, baker, chocolate and candy seller, olive curer or café. Aleppo borders one side of Mahane Yehuda and Jaffa Street on the other.
Jaffa Street in the direction away from Ben Yehuda eventually leads to the Central Bus Station across from which is the Congress building. Near to the bus station, approximately ten to fifteen minutes walk away from the Bus Station, with your back to the center of town, you come to what I discovered to be the administrative part of town. The education ministry, the national security agency, the tax authority, social security, and various banks line the main boulevard of Kanfei Nesharim. On either side of this thoroughfare, neighborhoods with conservatively dressed men and women indicate that the area is more on the religious side of the lifestyle spectrum.
However, the truly religious population of Jerusalem, the community the newspapers describe as the ultra-Orthodox extremists, fill the streets, homes and shops of Mea Shea'rim. Here you find men with long peis (locks of hair-- uncut sideburns), black hats, tzitzit (prayer fringes) hanging from their sides, kippot (head coverings), and women and children dressed from neck to waist, shoulder to wrist, past the knees. Even little girls wear stockings beneath long skirts throughout the year. Here in Mea Shea'rim, the night before the first day of summer I witnessed yet another aspect of Israel wherein one questions the existence of sanity, normalcy, and whether or not in Jerusalem, in fact, one sometimes walks into veritable time warps.
Eitan and I had a few hours together before his brother called to be picked up. Once we got the call we headed to the bus stop where he asked to be fetched and after toward the Old City to drop me off at my hostel before the doors locked at midnight. Further along Jaffa Street leads you to the walls of the Old City, specifically the Arab shouk and the Jewish Quarter, via Jaffa Gate. Earlier when I directed Eitan to the Center, I told him to drive down Jaffa Street, as far as I knew that was the quickest way to get where we needed to go. When Eitan was about to make the turn again to Jaffa Street his brother told him not to -- that route is for buses and taxis only. Sheepishly, I apologized for the earlier mistake, using as my excuse that I don’t drive in Jerusalem, how was I to know? Instead of turning right, Eitan stayed straight on the road.
Trying to wend our way back in the direction of the Old City, we found ourselves in the streets of Mea Shea'rim. Parts of this neighborhood are made up of narrow winding streets with two and three story Jerusalem stone buildings looming above, with balconies creating an almost canopy above head. Twisting and turning, we found we couldn’t get through the neighborhood on this night. The streets were filled with fire. Barricades of trash set aflame formed blockades, dumpsters filled with fire peeking over the rims, tires burning, the stench of rubber and burnt trash filled the air. Those responsible for this sickening mess were crowds of young and some middle-aged men standing around in their black hats and suits, peis and tzizit hanging.
Eitan tried to drive the wrong way down a one-way street, the only option because the road in front of us had white trash bags carefully placed in a flaming line to inhibit traffic from passing through. The road had no outlet and we had to reverse up the narrow street. The nose of the car peeked out from the small junction at the same time a group of young men started running in our direction, followed shortly after by a small explosion.
I didn’t really understand what I was seeing. I think I asked why and at some point, Eitan’s brother Yaakov explained they were protesting. These teenage boys claiming to live by the word of the Merciful and Compassionate God, Creator of the Universe and all beings within, were protesting against the next day’s gay pride parade. Earlier in the week these same groups of men had placed a fake bomb on a Jerusalem bus accompanied with a note that if the pride parade took place, there would be a real explosive as retribution. Disgust, shame,disappointment-- these are some of my immediate feelings in reaction to what was before my eyes.
Also, I found my mind thinking about the Holocaust. How six million Jews were killed but also six million others, including homosexuals, who were persecuted simply for being who they were, just as were the Jews. I thought of the hypocrisy, the hatred, the misplaced energy, the pollution rising into the sky, the ignorance, the arrogance and the plain stupidity of this act of protest. Instead of seeing this community as a symbol of tradition and mystique, all around me I could only see pimply-faced boys who are sex deprived and frustrated because all they do is study Talmud and pray every day. My mind ran through the rumors of outrageous rates of prostitution and domestic violence in this neighborhood. These thoughts clashing with images of the day I spent here ten years ago to shop for tokens of Jewish ritual, tallitot (prayer shawls), where I bought tefillin (leather prayer straps) for my younger brother, and tasted fresh, delicious chocolate-filled rugelach.
I thought to myself, is this what the founders and fighters of Israel wanted to establish? A land in which intolerance and xenophobia plagues the people who claim to be closest to God and keepers of the Jewish covenant with God?
I snapped out of my thoughts when I heard Eitan slam his hand into the steering wheel out of frustration. “I wish I knew what these people are called so I can know who to be mad at,” he exclaimed. Seconds before, young boys threw rocks at the taxi in front of us, the taxi that we followed to get out of this despicable mess.
Reaching the perimeter of Mea She'arim, soldiers and police were stationed with trucks, guns, and riot gear in case the protestors seeped out of their quarters to disturb the peace of the rest of the city. Finally out of the fray, Eitan drove onto the Highway 1. I noticed to my left, the quiet and deserted night streets of East Jerusalem. Barely making curfew, Eitan and Yaakov walked with me into the Old City walls to make sure I arrived at the hostel on time.
Eitan, Yaakov and I were supposed to have a discussion about contentious Jewish issues like who is a Jew and the forced, because it is the only recognized process in Israel, Orthodox conversion process. After a few minutes of scattered shared thoughts, another girl staying at the hostel who was smoking outside went inside, the door slammed shut and locked behind her. Jumping up to get her to open it up, the young woman on duty nearly refused my entrance for breaking curfew by five minutes. I convinced her to let me in explaining the ordeal I had just witnessed, and the delay it caused in getting back in time. She agreed to let me in, held the gate open while I said good night to Eitan and Yaakov, and scolded me for thinking I could disrespect the curfew.
I have to explain this hostel. It’s free, it’s in the Jewish Quarter, it’s called the Heritage House. The Heritage House website advertises the facility as a safe and free alternative to Arab hostels for Jewish travelers in Jerusalem. You can stay for a day, a week, a month or many months for that matter, as long as you are Jewish and there’s an open bed. The hostel opens from eight to nine a.m. and five p.m. until midnight. A 24-year-old religious woman by the name of Chaya oversees the women’s hostel, her two-year-old son, Pinchas, in tow wherever she goes.
At Heritage House, the downstairs common area is filled with books about Judaism -- Orthodox Judaism. Volumes justifying the diversified tasks of men and women as stated in the Torah and interpreted by centuries of rabbis and religious scholars. Chaya and her madrichim are responsible for encouraging guests to attend yeshiva, transportation provided, to learn more about being Jewish. Mention of God finds its way into every conversation. Some girls are there to study. Some, like me, are working on theses or doing research, or simply traveling during the summer.
Part of me finds Heritage House comforting and safe. On Thursday nights, the girls bake challah. It is peaceful behind the Old City Walls. The location allows me to walk to work, strolling by the Kotel (Western Wall) and through the Muslim Quarter each morning, past groups of tourists reenacting the Stations of the Cross on Via Dolorosa. So many worlds colliding within so few square feet. Moreover, for someone trying to make her funds stretch as far and long as possible, the price is right at Heritage House.
The other part of me feels absolutely hypocritical for accepting the kindness and ducking the proselytizing. This part of me also wants to rip my hair out when I find myself on the four nights that I’ve stayed there, explaining to the staff that Arabs are not a homogeneous people who all want the Jewish people to perish. Or, when I mentioned that I was going to Amman for a conference on promoting peace through dialogue and I received a blank look followed by the question, “where is Amman?”
On the flipside, I get insight into one strand of religious community in Jerusalem. From my experience so far, I see that it is a community working to live the word of God but from a place of fear and anxiety in which the rest of the world poses a threat to the Jewish people. It helps me to understand more dynamics of the conflict here. I gather that the leaders of this community, who are also in places of political power and influence, use their sanctimonious authority to keep status quo, putting blockades up to visions of peace where two different yet neighboring societies can work out the details of coexistence. This is the community that takes young people on tours of Hebron to visit settlements, the continuing expansion of which is a major contributing factor to justification for violence on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. (Not to mention, the International Court of Justice has ruled these settlements illegal according to international law, and Israel's government continues to contradict itself by claiming to stop building settlements as a gesture of peace, when settlements continue to appear within the bounds of greater Jerusalem.) These are the community leaders, not condoning the acts of protest perpetrated by the men and women of Mea Shea'rim, but neither doing anything to teach why damaging public property and air with burning tires and trash disrespects the Earth and therefore the God they believe created it.
In many ways they use the faith and spiritual intentions of their followers to perpetuate, in my view, a very unholy and sacrilege approach to living. They are using Judaism, a mechanism through which one may attempt to satisfy the soul’s yearning for unity with the divine, to conquer and divide.
While spending evenings with young women whom I view as indoctrinated with holy propaganda, not much different than the young boys in the madrasahs of Pakistan and Indonesia, for example, I try to gain their trust and ask them to see through a different lens. And honestly, I’m curious about them too. To know how this very small world in which they choose to exist seems to satisfy their heart’s desires. I try not to sit in judgment. All of the thoughts I’ve shared in the past few paragraphs, I try to put aside in order to have a dialogue about Jews, Palestinians, Israel, God, and our roles in this place called Israel and Palestine.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Walking around in too many shoes
Sometimes trying to be in this place is too confusing. Confusing isn't quite the word that describes feeling overwhelmed, disgusted, disappointed, proud, excited, bewildered, awe-inspired, depressed and also humbled. I feel in almost every moment each of my identities clashing with one another. I think to myself, I'm a Jew, a woman, an American, a peace activist, and apparently some would label me a Zionist because I do believe in the necessity and success of a Jewish State. It's too difficult to reconcile these different points of view when, in order to not take any one side, I have to constantly pay attention to these conflicts within me.
I spend the weekdays in East Jerusalem with my Palestinian colleagues at the Palestine Israel Journal. There, I am constantly faced with the racist, occupation politics that Israel executes. I start to feel ashamed and so sorry for the continued suffering of a people who, as of right now almost at are civil war. I see how different they are from Israelis, from Jews-- differences that are beautiful: cultural, social, political and historical. And with all of my heart and soul I want for them to be a people with a country in which they can thrive. In those moments I quiet the voice that is suspicious of their ability to accomplish such a task, looking at the chaos of the Gaza Strip and the violence's gradual infiltration into the West Bank. I see a very divided people, the Palestinians: of Gaza, of the West Bank, of East Jerusalem.
In many ways these three sectors of the same people are living very different lives, very different experiences of Israel and so the urgency and method of fighting the Palestinian national struggle differs from place to place. In Gaza it appears that the accepted method of change is violent struggle. In the West Bank political, democratic process is being explored with pockets of "terrorist cells" in Nablus and Jenin, which the I.D.F. constantly works to root out through raids, middle of the night arrests, and barricaded neighborhoods, curfews and lockdowns. In East Jerusalem, Palestinian business owners, NGO workers and such are ekking out a living as best they can with limited access to customers because of the difficulties getting back and forth from the West Bank, the permit controls and the checkpoints. Israelis for the most part do not give them business because the fact is most Israelis fear their life is at stake if they walk through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City or venture into downtown East Jerusalem.
At this point I wonder if Palestinians who are relatively comfortable and secure wouldn't rather just stay that way instead of being involved in a collapsing unity government and aggression that is indiscriminate against their own people? I feel deeply saddened that their nationalistic process is at such a standstill because of internal and external obstacles.
Hamas is taking over Gaza as I write this entry and I wonder how long it will be before they defeat Fatah-- whatever that means, and then turn their guns, anger, frustration and efforts to Israel. And if that happens then what? What happens to my identity as a peace activist? Because if the I.D.F. has to fight Hamas to protect Israel, I will support that decision. I will consider collateral damage to people and property as part of war-- for the sake of preseving the Jewish State, the means justifies the end, that being the security of my people. In writing that I feel somewhat ashamed and exposed for not being the humanist I wish I could be. I wish for peace for all people but if it's a blind, naive peace that eventually compromises the safety and livelihood of my people, then only too quickly am I prepared to take a side.
How can I sincerely hope for the future of the Palestinians when the prominent leaders of their struggle always uses Israel as its raison d'etre, its invaluability to the Palestinian people against the evil occupational force-- Israel, backed by the U.S., the pillar of Western society and its inherent corruption. So, my mind does this thing where I can't quite get around how it is that I want to work with a people who have a political party that would perhaps harm me for being a Jew and an American if I were at the wrong place at the wrong time. That I could represent so much of what is considered the reason for their difficulties is frightening. Then I remind myself, because I have to after reading news and listening to radio, that there are individuals involved in this conflict that are not to be clumped with Hamas or any other hostile party.
Then, there's this crazy feeling inside of me that swells from the inside-out when, for example, I was sitting at a bar in Tel Aviv with Eitan the other night, watching an Israeli woman in her early 20s singing with her guitar, an unbelievable and soulful voice, her own songs, performed at a hip cafe on the happening Allenby Street. I get to thinking: oh my God, here I am in Israel, amongst Jews, this performer at some point mentions, "Baruch HaShem" -- Bless God-- because she' thankful for something (haven't quite gotten the language down, yet) a Jewish phrase of thanks and it is assumed we understand because we are all Jews.
I start thinking about the Jewish people, 60 years ago. Sixty, forty, twenty years ago, the parents and grandparents of the youngsters in this cafe may have been fleeing Nazi persecution, or escaping famine in Ethiopia, or leaving Morocco because living in a society that kept them segregated from the rest was simply unacceptable when not a few hours away by plane, a country had been established that would treat them, the Jews, as whole citizens.
There's an Arab-Israeli movement in Israel that calls for a one-state solution in which all of Israel's citizens are treated as equal under the law. That the Jewish characteristic of the state is hypocritical-- Israel can't be Jewish and a democracy, and that this contradiction must come to an end.
I don't know what to do with this. I understand that Israel cannot be, and is not fully democratic while being the Jewish State. It's true that in this country depending on your religion you are treated differently under the law. I know this is unacceptable in the name of democracy but it is unacceptable to me that there not be a Jewish State. A peace activist, a Jew-- I choose the Jewish State and take a side against equality of human rights-- that's difficult to swallow for me. But I don't have faith that a secular State of Israel would be healthy for the Jewish people. We are a people with a right to a State, a right to a religion, which is problematic in the face of democracy because it's more than just religion, it's culture, ethnicity. Furthermore, aside from the Jewish identity, there is a national identity that is not Palestinian, is not Arab, is not American, it is Israeli.
I find myself having thoughts such as: but there is no true democracy anyway. It is merely a fiction that strives to become a reality. No nation-state is innocent of some form of discrimination against sectors of its citizens based on color, class, religion or historical claims. I find myself saying, why must the Jewish State be perfect and rise above what all other countries are doing anyway? For me, this is a justification for policies that I'm not comfortable with in Israel. I delve into the complexities and find that I cannot determine right or wrong without specific context and the bigger the picture gets for consideration, the more difficult it becomes to decide on any concrete conclusions or sentiments.
Then I also get incensed by those in this country who are interested in simply being Jewish, or religious/observant in Israel. They close their hearts to the suffering of the Palestinians, they shut their eyes and ears to the inequalities amongst Jews in this State. They assume that God provides and to study Torah is most of what is needed. They do not face the reality of the Israeli, surrounded by several hostile countries. Twenty-two Arab countries constantly in identity crisis, beteween nationalistic leanings and Arab unity. And now there is the influence of Iran, a nation of people who do not identify with Arabs, but who now have a leader that will use the plight of the Palestinians, for example, to push his own agenda for regional dominance.
So where do I stand in all of this? I'm not entirely sure. The multiplicity of my feelings are unnerving. When I seek out Israelis or Palestinians to discuss some of these issues I find myself needing to speak gingerly, choosing my words carefully and wisely so as not to deny anyone's right to exist, or to be categorized as another, either: far left, anti-Israel lunatic, or a right-wing Zionist with imperialistic tendencies.
I am an American too, and I have this sense of justice and liberty for all even though in my own country I know these idealistic concepts are still dreams that have never fully been realized. But, I still believe in fighting for this.
There are moments when I'm disappointed in Israelis for not caring enough about what's going on in not too distant neighborhoods. But I also understand their apathy and helplessness in the face of a conflict that has so many sides to it.
I understand the hesitancy to jeopardize stability if your family enjoys it. Why would you do that if that's the only control you can exert in a region of chaos? Care for your family, enjoy the distractions of fashion, good food, exercise, steady work, music, is that such a terrible thing to want and maintain? These are commonplace, granted aspects of lifestyle for us, but luxury to those of whom we sit in judgment.
I think in Harper Lee's, To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus Finch tells his daughter Scout that you don't really know a person until you've walked around in his shoes. There are so many shoes to walk around in here, none of which are comfortable. For me so far, there isn't one pair of shoes that necessarily fits.
I spend the weekdays in East Jerusalem with my Palestinian colleagues at the Palestine Israel Journal. There, I am constantly faced with the racist, occupation politics that Israel executes. I start to feel ashamed and so sorry for the continued suffering of a people who, as of right now almost at are civil war. I see how different they are from Israelis, from Jews-- differences that are beautiful: cultural, social, political and historical. And with all of my heart and soul I want for them to be a people with a country in which they can thrive. In those moments I quiet the voice that is suspicious of their ability to accomplish such a task, looking at the chaos of the Gaza Strip and the violence's gradual infiltration into the West Bank. I see a very divided people, the Palestinians: of Gaza, of the West Bank, of East Jerusalem.
In many ways these three sectors of the same people are living very different lives, very different experiences of Israel and so the urgency and method of fighting the Palestinian national struggle differs from place to place. In Gaza it appears that the accepted method of change is violent struggle. In the West Bank political, democratic process is being explored with pockets of "terrorist cells" in Nablus and Jenin, which the I.D.F. constantly works to root out through raids, middle of the night arrests, and barricaded neighborhoods, curfews and lockdowns. In East Jerusalem, Palestinian business owners, NGO workers and such are ekking out a living as best they can with limited access to customers because of the difficulties getting back and forth from the West Bank, the permit controls and the checkpoints. Israelis for the most part do not give them business because the fact is most Israelis fear their life is at stake if they walk through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City or venture into downtown East Jerusalem.
At this point I wonder if Palestinians who are relatively comfortable and secure wouldn't rather just stay that way instead of being involved in a collapsing unity government and aggression that is indiscriminate against their own people? I feel deeply saddened that their nationalistic process is at such a standstill because of internal and external obstacles.
Hamas is taking over Gaza as I write this entry and I wonder how long it will be before they defeat Fatah-- whatever that means, and then turn their guns, anger, frustration and efforts to Israel. And if that happens then what? What happens to my identity as a peace activist? Because if the I.D.F. has to fight Hamas to protect Israel, I will support that decision. I will consider collateral damage to people and property as part of war-- for the sake of preseving the Jewish State, the means justifies the end, that being the security of my people. In writing that I feel somewhat ashamed and exposed for not being the humanist I wish I could be. I wish for peace for all people but if it's a blind, naive peace that eventually compromises the safety and livelihood of my people, then only too quickly am I prepared to take a side.
How can I sincerely hope for the future of the Palestinians when the prominent leaders of their struggle always uses Israel as its raison d'etre, its invaluability to the Palestinian people against the evil occupational force-- Israel, backed by the U.S., the pillar of Western society and its inherent corruption. So, my mind does this thing where I can't quite get around how it is that I want to work with a people who have a political party that would perhaps harm me for being a Jew and an American if I were at the wrong place at the wrong time. That I could represent so much of what is considered the reason for their difficulties is frightening. Then I remind myself, because I have to after reading news and listening to radio, that there are individuals involved in this conflict that are not to be clumped with Hamas or any other hostile party.
Then, there's this crazy feeling inside of me that swells from the inside-out when, for example, I was sitting at a bar in Tel Aviv with Eitan the other night, watching an Israeli woman in her early 20s singing with her guitar, an unbelievable and soulful voice, her own songs, performed at a hip cafe on the happening Allenby Street. I get to thinking: oh my God, here I am in Israel, amongst Jews, this performer at some point mentions, "Baruch HaShem" -- Bless God-- because she' thankful for something (haven't quite gotten the language down, yet) a Jewish phrase of thanks and it is assumed we understand because we are all Jews.
I start thinking about the Jewish people, 60 years ago. Sixty, forty, twenty years ago, the parents and grandparents of the youngsters in this cafe may have been fleeing Nazi persecution, or escaping famine in Ethiopia, or leaving Morocco because living in a society that kept them segregated from the rest was simply unacceptable when not a few hours away by plane, a country had been established that would treat them, the Jews, as whole citizens.
There's an Arab-Israeli movement in Israel that calls for a one-state solution in which all of Israel's citizens are treated as equal under the law. That the Jewish characteristic of the state is hypocritical-- Israel can't be Jewish and a democracy, and that this contradiction must come to an end.
I don't know what to do with this. I understand that Israel cannot be, and is not fully democratic while being the Jewish State. It's true that in this country depending on your religion you are treated differently under the law. I know this is unacceptable in the name of democracy but it is unacceptable to me that there not be a Jewish State. A peace activist, a Jew-- I choose the Jewish State and take a side against equality of human rights-- that's difficult to swallow for me. But I don't have faith that a secular State of Israel would be healthy for the Jewish people. We are a people with a right to a State, a right to a religion, which is problematic in the face of democracy because it's more than just religion, it's culture, ethnicity. Furthermore, aside from the Jewish identity, there is a national identity that is not Palestinian, is not Arab, is not American, it is Israeli.
I find myself having thoughts such as: but there is no true democracy anyway. It is merely a fiction that strives to become a reality. No nation-state is innocent of some form of discrimination against sectors of its citizens based on color, class, religion or historical claims. I find myself saying, why must the Jewish State be perfect and rise above what all other countries are doing anyway? For me, this is a justification for policies that I'm not comfortable with in Israel. I delve into the complexities and find that I cannot determine right or wrong without specific context and the bigger the picture gets for consideration, the more difficult it becomes to decide on any concrete conclusions or sentiments.
Then I also get incensed by those in this country who are interested in simply being Jewish, or religious/observant in Israel. They close their hearts to the suffering of the Palestinians, they shut their eyes and ears to the inequalities amongst Jews in this State. They assume that God provides and to study Torah is most of what is needed. They do not face the reality of the Israeli, surrounded by several hostile countries. Twenty-two Arab countries constantly in identity crisis, beteween nationalistic leanings and Arab unity. And now there is the influence of Iran, a nation of people who do not identify with Arabs, but who now have a leader that will use the plight of the Palestinians, for example, to push his own agenda for regional dominance.
So where do I stand in all of this? I'm not entirely sure. The multiplicity of my feelings are unnerving. When I seek out Israelis or Palestinians to discuss some of these issues I find myself needing to speak gingerly, choosing my words carefully and wisely so as not to deny anyone's right to exist, or to be categorized as another, either: far left, anti-Israel lunatic, or a right-wing Zionist with imperialistic tendencies.
I am an American too, and I have this sense of justice and liberty for all even though in my own country I know these idealistic concepts are still dreams that have never fully been realized. But, I still believe in fighting for this.
There are moments when I'm disappointed in Israelis for not caring enough about what's going on in not too distant neighborhoods. But I also understand their apathy and helplessness in the face of a conflict that has so many sides to it.
I understand the hesitancy to jeopardize stability if your family enjoys it. Why would you do that if that's the only control you can exert in a region of chaos? Care for your family, enjoy the distractions of fashion, good food, exercise, steady work, music, is that such a terrible thing to want and maintain? These are commonplace, granted aspects of lifestyle for us, but luxury to those of whom we sit in judgment.
I think in Harper Lee's, To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus Finch tells his daughter Scout that you don't really know a person until you've walked around in his shoes. There are so many shoes to walk around in here, none of which are comfortable. For me so far, there isn't one pair of shoes that necessarily fits.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Commemoration-Celebration
Riding the bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, shallow breathing and determined nail-biting, I found myself in a bit of a panic. I wasn't feeling quite ready to internalize the world in which I was going to once again immerse myself. A world in which the integrity of my identity as a Jew, a woman and an American are called into question based on whether or not I can speak or work out against the occupation of a suffering people.
I started to think about the newspaper headlines in the past few weeks: Hamas rockets barraging Sderot, Fatah and Hamas rendering Gaza a virtual war zone, x number of Palestinians murdered in an I.D.F. raid-- Jericho, Ramallah, Hebron...
Unfortunately since my last stay here I have become at best skeptical and at worst cynical that any real shift toward peace will occur in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Reading the newspapers the same names come up again and again-- Haniyeh, Abbas, Erakat, Olmert, Livni...I see them doing the same dance to nearly the same tune over and over. Either side using any signs of escalation as a rallying cry against an eternal enemy. If one is not fighting the occupation, then one is accepting the occupation. Both Israelis and Palestininans in that camp are trying as best as they can to live their lives around the elephant in the living room.
Which got me thinking...
I'm not comfortable being here and ignoring the fact that there are a few million people whose lives are classified as occupied, by the international community. Neither am I comfortable in a crowd in which each Israeli is demonized and assumed guilty of crimes against humanity simply for being Israeli. Basically I'm just not comfortable with the argument being either black or white.
What I understand at this point is that the public discourse on the Israel/Palestine conflict is primarily black and white in its coverage in the media. Instead of informing the public it polarizes the public and it alienates the public-- depending on which public it portrays as villainous or heroic. In my mind, this is problematic and moreover completely useless to the peace movement that believe it or not, DOES exist.
This is not an original thought or revelation but the fact of the matter is the media plays such a huge role in manipulating public opinion. The media in many ways chooses the reality in which we live.
This led me to another thought.
With respect to this blog and whatever perceptions or opinions are formed as a result of reading this stuff, as long as I seek out individuals who recount the stories of hate and separation, inequality and vengeful justice, I am not contributing anything different to that which is written on the conflict in the Middle East. However, if I seek out and write about those whose vision for peace is as strong and persistent as those who enjoy carrying out the endless violence, then I ask the readers to learn and share about the complexities of peace making and not the domino effect of violence making, which we all know so well. Would reading about peacemaking be more gentle on the eyes? Would it encourage more to read about the events here if suddenly the coverage was no longer predictable?
Would the rockets be as effective if they weren't on the front page of the newspapers of the world? What if instead, coverage of reconciliation circles between former Israeli I.D.F. soldiers and former Palestinian militants held the page-turning column on the front page of the New York Times on Sunday morning? What if Arab and Israeli musical collaborations in clubs showed up in the international section instead of bombed out discos? Is it possible that the "bad guys", the terrorists--- would reconsider their modus operandi? If they stopped getting so much attention for their bad behavior, would that behavior change for the better?
How many people here are working to create a reality of peaceful coexistence? Many. How many people are working to perpetuate a reality of violence and revenge? Also, many. But who gets the spotlight? Who decides?
We have the power to create our own reality.
It becomes a battle of truths. That the conflict will never end, that these people are incapable of living amongst one another. That is so, and that is not so. Why is one point of view more prevalent than the other? It is because of what we choose to read and then choose to believe and then choose to focus upon. As the center of our own universe, we design our universe on a day-to-day basis. We create the stories to our liking, to our moods, to our purpose. What would it take to try on a different reality?
Racism, classism, bigotry, anti-Semitism, anti-Islam. These are very real epidemics in these dueling societies. These human imperfections I identify as challenges to those who work to create a reality in which peace is possible. But these issues rest on one face of the peace and conflict coin. On the other side is tolerance, acceptance, reconciliation, healing, diversity, multiculturalism.
Last night I walked from the hotel in East Jerusalem to West Jerusalem. Leaving the hotel I spoke with my friends here, the family members who run and own the place: Jacob, Ro’ina and James were so happy to have me back. Jacob asked how I have been. James told me, “you look good.” Ro’ina said, “Habibti! Welcome back.” I adore these people, I felt home, as though I’d never left. I felt awful inside for the time I’ve spent away from here able to put these every day people, just like me-- an every day person, out of my heart, because of what I’ve been reading in the newspapers these past two months instead of living myself.
East Jerusalem in the summer time stays awake longer than in the winter, following the lead of the sun. Men and women are out and about. Little boys and girls run around in adorable outfits and sandals. Little girls' hair festooned with barrettes wearing big smiles. Little boys kicking soccer balls around, dripping popsicles down their shirts, artificial pinks and reds staining the perimeter of their mouths. In that moment life is beautiful for them. These little children aren't aware yet that today, June 5, is the anniversary of catastrophe in their people's history. The bitter has not yet found its way into their sweet, young lives. And I think, how can I help to prolong those moments for these precious babies? How can I keep the tanks and guns away from their eyes? How can I help to make those tanks and guns unnecessary?
In West Jerusalem the streets are decorated with hanging blue and white lights across the streets held up by buildings on either side. The city is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its unification. There are concerts, lively music followed by enthusiastic applause spills out from venues onto Jaffa Street. And I think, what will it take for the men, women and children on this side of the highway to feel safe enough to have a little more compassion for their counterparts on the other side? How can I inspire the Israelis and Jews to make some room in their hearts for all of those Palestinians who also want to sing and dance in celebration of their identity as well?
Can a reality be created in which both sides see that the other side wants to heal -- to no longer hurt, and is willing to work to make it happen?
I started to think about the newspaper headlines in the past few weeks: Hamas rockets barraging Sderot, Fatah and Hamas rendering Gaza a virtual war zone, x number of Palestinians murdered in an I.D.F. raid-- Jericho, Ramallah, Hebron...
Unfortunately since my last stay here I have become at best skeptical and at worst cynical that any real shift toward peace will occur in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Reading the newspapers the same names come up again and again-- Haniyeh, Abbas, Erakat, Olmert, Livni...I see them doing the same dance to nearly the same tune over and over. Either side using any signs of escalation as a rallying cry against an eternal enemy. If one is not fighting the occupation, then one is accepting the occupation. Both Israelis and Palestininans in that camp are trying as best as they can to live their lives around the elephant in the living room.
Which got me thinking...
I'm not comfortable being here and ignoring the fact that there are a few million people whose lives are classified as occupied, by the international community. Neither am I comfortable in a crowd in which each Israeli is demonized and assumed guilty of crimes against humanity simply for being Israeli. Basically I'm just not comfortable with the argument being either black or white.
What I understand at this point is that the public discourse on the Israel/Palestine conflict is primarily black and white in its coverage in the media. Instead of informing the public it polarizes the public and it alienates the public-- depending on which public it portrays as villainous or heroic. In my mind, this is problematic and moreover completely useless to the peace movement that believe it or not, DOES exist.
This is not an original thought or revelation but the fact of the matter is the media plays such a huge role in manipulating public opinion. The media in many ways chooses the reality in which we live.
This led me to another thought.
With respect to this blog and whatever perceptions or opinions are formed as a result of reading this stuff, as long as I seek out individuals who recount the stories of hate and separation, inequality and vengeful justice, I am not contributing anything different to that which is written on the conflict in the Middle East. However, if I seek out and write about those whose vision for peace is as strong and persistent as those who enjoy carrying out the endless violence, then I ask the readers to learn and share about the complexities of peace making and not the domino effect of violence making, which we all know so well. Would reading about peacemaking be more gentle on the eyes? Would it encourage more to read about the events here if suddenly the coverage was no longer predictable?
Would the rockets be as effective if they weren't on the front page of the newspapers of the world? What if instead, coverage of reconciliation circles between former Israeli I.D.F. soldiers and former Palestinian militants held the page-turning column on the front page of the New York Times on Sunday morning? What if Arab and Israeli musical collaborations in clubs showed up in the international section instead of bombed out discos? Is it possible that the "bad guys", the terrorists--- would reconsider their modus operandi? If they stopped getting so much attention for their bad behavior, would that behavior change for the better?
How many people here are working to create a reality of peaceful coexistence? Many. How many people are working to perpetuate a reality of violence and revenge? Also, many. But who gets the spotlight? Who decides?
We have the power to create our own reality.
It becomes a battle of truths. That the conflict will never end, that these people are incapable of living amongst one another. That is so, and that is not so. Why is one point of view more prevalent than the other? It is because of what we choose to read and then choose to believe and then choose to focus upon. As the center of our own universe, we design our universe on a day-to-day basis. We create the stories to our liking, to our moods, to our purpose. What would it take to try on a different reality?
Racism, classism, bigotry, anti-Semitism, anti-Islam. These are very real epidemics in these dueling societies. These human imperfections I identify as challenges to those who work to create a reality in which peace is possible. But these issues rest on one face of the peace and conflict coin. On the other side is tolerance, acceptance, reconciliation, healing, diversity, multiculturalism.
Last night I walked from the hotel in East Jerusalem to West Jerusalem. Leaving the hotel I spoke with my friends here, the family members who run and own the place: Jacob, Ro’ina and James were so happy to have me back. Jacob asked how I have been. James told me, “you look good.” Ro’ina said, “Habibti! Welcome back.” I adore these people, I felt home, as though I’d never left. I felt awful inside for the time I’ve spent away from here able to put these every day people, just like me-- an every day person, out of my heart, because of what I’ve been reading in the newspapers these past two months instead of living myself.
East Jerusalem in the summer time stays awake longer than in the winter, following the lead of the sun. Men and women are out and about. Little boys and girls run around in adorable outfits and sandals. Little girls' hair festooned with barrettes wearing big smiles. Little boys kicking soccer balls around, dripping popsicles down their shirts, artificial pinks and reds staining the perimeter of their mouths. In that moment life is beautiful for them. These little children aren't aware yet that today, June 5, is the anniversary of catastrophe in their people's history. The bitter has not yet found its way into their sweet, young lives. And I think, how can I help to prolong those moments for these precious babies? How can I keep the tanks and guns away from their eyes? How can I help to make those tanks and guns unnecessary?
In West Jerusalem the streets are decorated with hanging blue and white lights across the streets held up by buildings on either side. The city is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its unification. There are concerts, lively music followed by enthusiastic applause spills out from venues onto Jaffa Street. And I think, what will it take for the men, women and children on this side of the highway to feel safe enough to have a little more compassion for their counterparts on the other side? How can I inspire the Israelis and Jews to make some room in their hearts for all of those Palestinians who also want to sing and dance in celebration of their identity as well?
Can a reality be created in which both sides see that the other side wants to heal -- to no longer hurt, and is willing to work to make it happen?
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