This is a quote by the Israeli Chief of Staff from 2003 in response to the occupation and the checkpoints. It is a key question. What is this state created in the name of Judaism? Who are these Jews that are oppressing, murdering, and ethnically cleansing another people? Who is this government that has established an apartheid, fascist state?
It is not uncommon for abused little boys to grow up to become abusers (little girls tend to internalize abuse and become self-abusive), relating more to the power of the oppressor than the passivity they read into victimization. To some extent, the Israel is this phenomenon on a macro level. While I understand the heartbreak of learning these facts, it is crucial that American Jews stand up and say "no more" and to refuse to be a part of an ongoing genocide. How often have we imagined what would have happened if the German people had done this 60 years ago? Is there some reason that we do not demand the same of ourselves? It is no longer sufficient to claim "I never knew what was happening." There are books at your local Borders and Barnes and Noble stores, there are films, there are websites, there are Palestinians who will be ecstatic to talk to you. You do not even have to go to Palestine. And once you are educated, you have the responsibility to say "not in my name" and to not be fooled by the "anti-Semitic" labels that are put on each criticism of the state of Israel.
All states are answerable for their actions. All governments bear responsibility to treat human beings with dignity and respect basic human rights. Israel has violated her responsibility to such an extent that she is guilty of the commission of numerous war crimes under international law. These statements and calls for accountability are anything but anti-Semitic. Instead, the call to act as righteous human beings towards another group of human beings should be the only demand any religion can make. No religion should be allowed to hide behind its gods to confiscate land, destroy homes, murder people, separate families, oppress a population, encage a population, or deprive a population of its basic human rights. In this way, Judaism is no different but must be held to the same standards.
Arguably, given our history of oppression, we might demand that we hold ourselves to an even higher standard. Are we not, after all, disproportionately represented in most civil rights movements? Are we not disproportionately represented in unions and other fights for human rights? If American Jews do not stand up and demand that Israel be brought to justice, demand human rights for Palestinians and an end to the occupation, then the only conclusion can be that such disproportionate representation is a cloak to hide and distract the world from the war crimes against humanity the Jewish state is committing.
I thank you for accompanying me on my journey. It is only the beginning of my work for justice for the Palestinians. I hope that you will join me.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement
The last meeting of our trip was with Omar Barghouti regarding the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel (BDS). The BDS call was initiated on July 9, 2005. This was the first anniversary of the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion against the Wall. As became clear to us, the international community has completely failed the Palestinians in that it grants Israel such impunity that Israel is literally getting away with murder. Even the highest Israeli court has ruled that the wall is illegal and yet, the wall remains. Highest court on land said wall illegal and no one did anything. Instead, Israel continues to confiscate or destroy Palestinian homes, lands, trees, and property. Moreover, the oppression, harassment, attacks and apartheid system still remains. So the Palestinian civil society came together and realized that if world cannot stop the wall, or Israel’s other blatant violation of international law, they needed to resort to civil society as the South African black community did.
Here, Omar took the time to stress what we had learned in the past two weeks of traveling throughout Palestine: in the west, people mostly talk about Palestinians armed resistance, ignoring the fact that most Palestinian resistance has been nonviolent, civil resistance. Nor did the Palestinian learn nonviolent civil resistance from Ghandi. And while Mandela was a big inspiration, the Palestinians have their own long history of nonviolence from which to draw. Throughout the past 100 years, Palestinians have held many boycotts, divestments demonstrations, tax revolts (using the “no taxation without representation slogan) etc.
Omar also addressed one of the most difficult parts of BDS: the Palestinian campaign for cultural and academic boycott. He told us that, unlike in S. Africa, Israel’s academic institutions are an indispensable part of the regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid. Without its academy, Israel cannot survive as an apartheid, occupier, oppressive state. In South Africa, this most sacred part of society was sports. For Israel, it is the academy: the most sacred structure in Israel. And academy has played a key role in the oppression/occupation/apartheid with such deep complicity that the military and academia are one and the same. (I believe it is also Shlomo Sands who discusses the complicity of academia with respect to archeology in his new book “The Invention of the Jewish People.”)
Omar also told us that, to the Palestinians’ surprise, BDS was successful from the beginning. Today, he believes it is because they hit just the right combination of elements:
1. BDS addresses basic rights of Palestinians everywhere. BDS does not address political solutions (1 v 2 state solution). Instead, it looks at 3 basic rights:
• The refugees: right of return per Resolution 194. This is largest group of Palestinians, constituting 60%. (Even in Gaza, 80% of Gazans are refugees).
• The Palestinians in the ’67 Occupied Territories: ending the occupation and colonization, including in the Golan Heights.
• The Palestinians in ’48 Israel: they have been deleted out of definition of Palestinians, especially in western world. Here, BDS aims to end the system of discrimination in Israel against Israeli Palestinians, including against the internal refugee population who cannot go back to their villages.
2. BDS is a nonviolent civil form of resistance.
3. It addresses Israelis directly in that it calls on conscientious Israelis to join Palestinians in this campaign. This is a form of recognition so that whatever the political solution is, it future includes conscientious Israelis.
This combination is the reason for BDS success. BDS now has the support of major trade unions around the world (including Irish, British, Scottish, Canadian, Norway, Belgium, France, Italy, and South Africa). And after the Israeli massacre in Gaza, those international unions who were hesitant to join did join. BDS also has the support of many groups in civil society internationally, including in the west.
One important thing about Israel, is that Israel has not invented the weapons to combat BDS. They have tried everything but nothing is defeating BDS. Israel knows how to deal with confrontational nonviolence resistance, i.e. Bil’in (the refugee camp in which there is an anti-wall demonstration every Friday, to which Israel responds via tear gas canisters and detentions). But with BDS, the Israelis are completely lost. They have tried the cry of anti-Semitism charge but this has not stuck because there is a disproportionately high number of western Jews joining BDS plus the campaign is based on Israel’s violation of international law and basic human rights. Plus, there is no duplicity here, in other words, whatever languages are used, whatever groups sign on, there is one set of BDS guidelines.
Also, after the Gaza massacre, BDS took off even faster. In 2009, BDS reached new circles and media, the US being most important example. Omar reported that at the AIPAC conference in May, 2009, the director said that while everyone talking about Iran, we have threat at home, BDS and this is beginning of the end unless we do something about it. In addition, before the national J-Street conference, student conferences were held at which students dropped the “pro-Israel” from their slogans, saying such slogans are not popular on campus and so they would lose many supporters if they continued using them. Also, at the J-Street conference, there was a panel/workshop on how to counter BDS on campus. Instead of coming up with ways to counter, however, J-Street adopted part of BDS, thinking that if they pushed for the boycott of certain domestic products, they would circumvent the entire boycott. Finally, the NY Times published Mustafa Barghouti’s article defending BDS. (See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/opinion/17iht-edbarghouthi.html). In addition, Mr. Barghouti and Anna Baltzer were both on the Daily Show with John Stewart. The times they are a changing.
Now Omar also pointed out that the BDS movement distinguishes between universities or other institutions and individuals. The boycott call is against institutions (whereas in South Africa, it was against everyone and everything.) The Palestinians do not believe in blacklists because they smack of McCarthyism. Nor are they out to make judgments about good versus bad Israelis. Instead, BDS’ main point is to target Israeli institutions due to their complicity in maintaining racist, apartheid system in Israel. (this despite the fact that out of 9,000 academics, only 407 have ever even come out with a statement remotely opposing the occupation, without using the word.)
For those interested in learning more about the complicity of Israeli institutions, I would direct you to the following websites:
http://www.bdsmovement.net/; http://www.pacbi.org/.
Suffice it to say here that in addition to being built on top of destroyed Palestinians villages, at some Israeli universities, only those who serve in the army get dorm rooms. Of course, few Palestinians serve, so these students are SOL. Further, the universities have been instrumental in developing tactics of “war” (read: terrorism) inflicted on the Palestinians.
Of course, inevitably BDS activists get asked the question of “why single out Israel?” But the real question is why is the west singling out Israel. The Palestinians are simply demanding that Israel be treated like any other country, no better and no worse. Instead, today, Israel is the only colonial state that gets billions of US aid (Sudan, for example, doesn’t get any). Moreover, there are many other human rights violators that are worse but they are not US allies that get aid. In other words, western governments must stop supporting Israel in its oppressive, occupying regime.
And for you lawyers out there, Omar stressed that a boycott campaign must first be based on thorough research. BDS is meticulous in its research on who/what to boycott. To date, the Israeli lobby has not found ONE ERRONEOUS FACT in BDS campaigns. For information on what products to boycott, see http://www.whoprofits.org.
Here, Omar took the time to stress what we had learned in the past two weeks of traveling throughout Palestine: in the west, people mostly talk about Palestinians armed resistance, ignoring the fact that most Palestinian resistance has been nonviolent, civil resistance. Nor did the Palestinian learn nonviolent civil resistance from Ghandi. And while Mandela was a big inspiration, the Palestinians have their own long history of nonviolence from which to draw. Throughout the past 100 years, Palestinians have held many boycotts, divestments demonstrations, tax revolts (using the “no taxation without representation slogan) etc.
Omar also addressed one of the most difficult parts of BDS: the Palestinian campaign for cultural and academic boycott. He told us that, unlike in S. Africa, Israel’s academic institutions are an indispensable part of the regime of occupation, colonization and apartheid. Without its academy, Israel cannot survive as an apartheid, occupier, oppressive state. In South Africa, this most sacred part of society was sports. For Israel, it is the academy: the most sacred structure in Israel. And academy has played a key role in the oppression/occupation/apartheid with such deep complicity that the military and academia are one and the same. (I believe it is also Shlomo Sands who discusses the complicity of academia with respect to archeology in his new book “The Invention of the Jewish People.”)
Omar also told us that, to the Palestinians’ surprise, BDS was successful from the beginning. Today, he believes it is because they hit just the right combination of elements:
1. BDS addresses basic rights of Palestinians everywhere. BDS does not address political solutions (1 v 2 state solution). Instead, it looks at 3 basic rights:
• The refugees: right of return per Resolution 194. This is largest group of Palestinians, constituting 60%. (Even in Gaza, 80% of Gazans are refugees).
• The Palestinians in the ’67 Occupied Territories: ending the occupation and colonization, including in the Golan Heights.
• The Palestinians in ’48 Israel: they have been deleted out of definition of Palestinians, especially in western world. Here, BDS aims to end the system of discrimination in Israel against Israeli Palestinians, including against the internal refugee population who cannot go back to their villages.
2. BDS is a nonviolent civil form of resistance.
3. It addresses Israelis directly in that it calls on conscientious Israelis to join Palestinians in this campaign. This is a form of recognition so that whatever the political solution is, it future includes conscientious Israelis.
This combination is the reason for BDS success. BDS now has the support of major trade unions around the world (including Irish, British, Scottish, Canadian, Norway, Belgium, France, Italy, and South Africa). And after the Israeli massacre in Gaza, those international unions who were hesitant to join did join. BDS also has the support of many groups in civil society internationally, including in the west.
One important thing about Israel, is that Israel has not invented the weapons to combat BDS. They have tried everything but nothing is defeating BDS. Israel knows how to deal with confrontational nonviolence resistance, i.e. Bil’in (the refugee camp in which there is an anti-wall demonstration every Friday, to which Israel responds via tear gas canisters and detentions). But with BDS, the Israelis are completely lost. They have tried the cry of anti-Semitism charge but this has not stuck because there is a disproportionately high number of western Jews joining BDS plus the campaign is based on Israel’s violation of international law and basic human rights. Plus, there is no duplicity here, in other words, whatever languages are used, whatever groups sign on, there is one set of BDS guidelines.
Also, after the Gaza massacre, BDS took off even faster. In 2009, BDS reached new circles and media, the US being most important example. Omar reported that at the AIPAC conference in May, 2009, the director said that while everyone talking about Iran, we have threat at home, BDS and this is beginning of the end unless we do something about it. In addition, before the national J-Street conference, student conferences were held at which students dropped the “pro-Israel” from their slogans, saying such slogans are not popular on campus and so they would lose many supporters if they continued using them. Also, at the J-Street conference, there was a panel/workshop on how to counter BDS on campus. Instead of coming up with ways to counter, however, J-Street adopted part of BDS, thinking that if they pushed for the boycott of certain domestic products, they would circumvent the entire boycott. Finally, the NY Times published Mustafa Barghouti’s article defending BDS. (See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/opinion/17iht-edbarghouthi.html). In addition, Mr. Barghouti and Anna Baltzer were both on the Daily Show with John Stewart. The times they are a changing.
Now Omar also pointed out that the BDS movement distinguishes between universities or other institutions and individuals. The boycott call is against institutions (whereas in South Africa, it was against everyone and everything.) The Palestinians do not believe in blacklists because they smack of McCarthyism. Nor are they out to make judgments about good versus bad Israelis. Instead, BDS’ main point is to target Israeli institutions due to their complicity in maintaining racist, apartheid system in Israel. (this despite the fact that out of 9,000 academics, only 407 have ever even come out with a statement remotely opposing the occupation, without using the word.)
For those interested in learning more about the complicity of Israeli institutions, I would direct you to the following websites:
http://www.bdsmovement.net/; http://www.pacbi.org/.
Suffice it to say here that in addition to being built on top of destroyed Palestinians villages, at some Israeli universities, only those who serve in the army get dorm rooms. Of course, few Palestinians serve, so these students are SOL. Further, the universities have been instrumental in developing tactics of “war” (read: terrorism) inflicted on the Palestinians.
Of course, inevitably BDS activists get asked the question of “why single out Israel?” But the real question is why is the west singling out Israel. The Palestinians are simply demanding that Israel be treated like any other country, no better and no worse. Instead, today, Israel is the only colonial state that gets billions of US aid (Sudan, for example, doesn’t get any). Moreover, there are many other human rights violators that are worse but they are not US allies that get aid. In other words, western governments must stop supporting Israel in its oppressive, occupying regime.
And for you lawyers out there, Omar stressed that a boycott campaign must first be based on thorough research. BDS is meticulous in its research on who/what to boycott. To date, the Israeli lobby has not found ONE ERRONEOUS FACT in BDS campaigns. For information on what products to boycott, see http://www.whoprofits.org.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Imwas - a/k/a Canada Park
On our last day, we, among other things, visited the former “Canada Park.” Canada Park is a park funded by the Jewish National Fund - Canada. The JNF and the Israeli horrors are intricately connected. Rather than the nice charitable fund we all thought, the JNF is the custodian for the 93% of the land in Israel that is state owned and that only Jews can lease or build. Remember all those $2.00 trees we purchased to make the desert bloom? Well, to hide the destruction of the hundred of Palestinian villages in 1948 and 1967, the JNF planted those trees over the sites of the destroyed villages. If you know what you are looking for, when you go to these parks, you can see the ruins of the villages. I have posted pictures below from the remains of one of the villages, Imwas, on which Canada Park was built. The wheel is an olive press. The cacti are what the Palestinians typically used in their villages to denote property lines. The headstone is a Palestinian grave stone, with Arabic writing on it. The stones are the stones left after the Israelis demolished the village.
When Canadians discovered this outrage, there was an outcry. Zochrot has also taken action. Zochrot is an Israeli organization working to raise awareness to the Nakba as well as to the refugee issue and the refugees’ right of return. Their main work is educating Israelis about Nakba. They are now coming across stories from Israelis who were there in 1948, and even participated. Israelis don’t study the Nakba, don’t visit places destroyed or hear testimonies. Destroyed villages are not on maps, and there are no signs. Zochrot is trying to expose knowledge, history and geography. They believe that Israel needs to acknowledge the Palestinians’ loss and take responsibility, which is essential to reconciliation in future. We met with Zochrot earlier in the trip.
One of Zochrot’s projects was Canada Park. They filed a lawsuit to put up signs commemorating Imwas. They succeeded and the Israeli government, surprisingly, put up the Imwas signs. Subsequently, the signs were blacked out with paint. Zochrot went back to court but the Israeli government’s position was that the original court order was to put up signs, which they did, not maintain them. Eventually, between the outcry and the Zochrot action, the name of the park was changed, officially, to “Ayalon Park.” There is a movement to revoke the JNF Canada’s non-profit status. If you want to read a short summary of this issue, go to http://www.countercurrents.org/cook220609.htm I am going to try to get some more sleep now. More about our meeting with Omar Barghouti and some closing thoughts later.
When Canadians discovered this outrage, there was an outcry. Zochrot has also taken action. Zochrot is an Israeli organization working to raise awareness to the Nakba as well as to the refugee issue and the refugees’ right of return. Their main work is educating Israelis about Nakba. They are now coming across stories from Israelis who were there in 1948, and even participated. Israelis don’t study the Nakba, don’t visit places destroyed or hear testimonies. Destroyed villages are not on maps, and there are no signs. Zochrot is trying to expose knowledge, history and geography. They believe that Israel needs to acknowledge the Palestinians’ loss and take responsibility, which is essential to reconciliation in future. We met with Zochrot earlier in the trip.
One of Zochrot’s projects was Canada Park. They filed a lawsuit to put up signs commemorating Imwas. They succeeded and the Israeli government, surprisingly, put up the Imwas signs. Subsequently, the signs were blacked out with paint. Zochrot went back to court but the Israeli government’s position was that the original court order was to put up signs, which they did, not maintain them. Eventually, between the outcry and the Zochrot action, the name of the park was changed, officially, to “Ayalon Park.” There is a movement to revoke the JNF Canada’s non-profit status. If you want to read a short summary of this issue, go to http://www.countercurrents.org/cook220609.htm I am going to try to get some more sleep now. More about our meeting with Omar Barghouti and some closing thoughts later.
Hebron and "Hummus for Peace"
So I am now back in New York. Before I tell you about the last day, I will try to tackle Hebron. Hebron today is getting it the worst from the settlers. These are right-wing, fundamentalist Orthodox settlers. Now before you breathe a sigh of relief because everyone knows the Orthodox are crazy, here is the important part. Remember that the issue is not the crazy Orthodox, it is the complicity of the Israeli government and the IDF.
I will start the story of Hebron with what we saw as we arrived and were preparing to sit down to a nice lunch of hummus and falafel. (Side bar: hummus is not an Israeli dish, it was originally a Palestinian dish. When we joked with one of our guides about how they even stole the hummus, he replied “yes, but we will be glad to trade hummus for peace – we will agree that hummus is Israeli in return for peace.”) We were in the center of town where there was a military compound. As we watched, the soldiers stopped 3 Palestinian young men and one by one, took them inside the fenced-off compound. We stood there and watched, hoping our presence would force these young soldiers to behave. Then we heard a loud bang – like something (somebody?) being thrown against the wall of the compound. I do not know how this story ends.
Our guide then proceeded to tell us the story of Hebron. The settlers came to Hebron with a lie: they were going to a hotel to celebrate Passover. They promised the army they would leave the day after the holiday. Instead, the next day they announced that they were here to settle Hebron. And they simply stayed. Yigdal Allon armed the soldiers with weapons. Prime Minister Eshkol avoided confronting the situation and, eventually, the IDF trained the settlers in weaponry and made them a part of the Army in this strange way of avoiding evicting Jews. Six months later, the government decided to establish a Jewish neighborhood in Hebron, in the heart of the Arab city. I can only skim this appalling story. To read it in detail, I highly recommend “Lords of the Land – the War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007,” by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar.
But for those historians amongst you, our guide also mentioned the Arab massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929. Before this, Jews and Arabs lived side by side, peacefully, until the rise of Zionists. Our guide told us that Hebronites distinguish between Jews, their friends and neighbors, and Zionists – those who came to colonize, conquer and oppress, like Baruch Goldstein and his settler friends. He talked about how they would go to each other’s weddings and funerals, how his grandfather has told him stories of the diverse community of Hebron. The week before the massacre, the Zionists raised an Israeli flag at the wailing wall. It was during a Jewish holiday and Muslim prayers. The Muslims were offended and riots broke out. There were rumors that Jews were killing Muslims and Muslims were killing Jews. Tensions were high and here our guide told us that Hebronites often wonder about the British role. Eventually, 67 Hebronite Jews were killed after which the British evacuated the entire Jewish population from Hebron. After the 1967 war, with the move to settle Hebron, the settlers launched a campaign saying “we take back our properties!” However, the descendants of the massacre victims went to the city council opposing the settlers. They were unsuccessful.
Instead, the IDF moved in, literally, into Palestinians homes and, as I indicated above, supported and protected the settlers. They deported Palestinian residents, including the elected mayor and threw some Palestinian leaders out of the country. They demolished Palestinian homes. Then came Oslo.
In connection with Oslo, Israeli troops were to redeploy from certain Palestinian inhabited areas. Remember, though, that the settlements were one of the issues that Oslo put off to be negotiated later. So when it came to Hebron, the Israeli government refused to redeploy because there are settlers living (illegally, of course) in Hebron who need protection. It was in Hebron in 1994 that Dr. Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler/terrorist, burst into a mosque and started firing at 800 worshipers. 29 Palestinians were murdered and 125 wounded. The settlers have turned Goldstein’s grave into a monument to Goldstein and view him as a hero. His gravestone reads: “he had sacrificed himself for the sake of Israel, his Torah and his land.” The Israeli government responded by instituting a curfew . . . against the Palestinians in Hebron. They then turned the mosque into a half-mosque, half synagogue.
The Palestinians then began to work to get the settlers out but the settlers respond with daily attacks on the Palestinians. The power imbalance here, with the settlers being armed not only with weapons but with the IDF, has made it impossible for the Palestinians to evict these troublesome neighbors. And what is Israel fighting for here? The rights of about 600 settlers, 250 of whom are Yeshiva students, here temporarily. There are 150,000 Palestinians in Hebron.
And how does Israel fight? There are now approximately 98 different movement restrictions on the Palestinians. These are mostly in the old city, which consists of 1 square kilometer. They include checkpoints, blocked alleys, metal gates, and rooftop monitoring, all of which I witnessed with my own, tearing eyes. Curfew, another favorite tool of oppression, was imposed from 2000-2003 and forced many businesses to close, destroying Hebron’s economy. As to the I.D. card check we witnessed above, our guide pointed out that the Israelis have a sophisticated computer system on which they could simply check out the status of a Palestinian’s I.D. card. Instead, they physically stop the Palestinians, which “I.D. check” can last anywhere from 20 minutes to 3 hours. There are arrests of many Palestinians here. In addition, 512 businesses have been closed by direct Israeli order. They are welded shut.
The Israelis also close roads to Palestinians, not Jews. Sometime this means the Palestinians cannot drive on a road, sometimes it means they cannot walk on the road. Sometimes the road is the road on which the Palestinians live. To get out of their houses, they sometimes go roof-top hopping, sometimes climb out ladders from second story windows. What if you are pregnant, disabled, elderly or have small children? I cannot imagine living like this. In a minute, I will tell you about the Hebronite Palestinian family we visited. But for now, let me continue. The settlers, as I indicated, are ultra-Orthodox fundamentalists. When they harass the Palestinians, they do so with chants such as “death to the Arabs” and “Arabs to the gas chambers.” Nice, right? Their current leader has a sticker on his care “I have already killed an Arab, have you?” When they came to Hebron, they built their Yeshiva on top of the Palestinian school. The soldiers took over another Palestinian school, as well as the women’s center.
Now as we are walking down one of the nearly-deserted streets, we see netting above us. On top of the nettings are trash, large rocks and empty plastic bags. Our guide tells us the Palestinians have to place netting over their streets because the settlers throw their trash, rocks and plastic bags filled with water, urine or even acid down onto the Palestinians. (Many settlers’ homes are built on top of Palestinian buildings.” One time, a knife was thrown, which penetrated 4 centimeters into a Palestinian’s head. No charge were ever brought. How would they know who did this? Well, there are cameras everywhere, watching. The Israelis have another cute trick. In response to a settler woman who was injured by a wire in a fruit market, they imposed curfews against the Palestinians, detaining and arresting tens of Palestinians. (Our guide claimed the injury was an accident. Even if you assume the worst and she was “stabbed” by the wire as she claimed, notice the difference in response between injured/attacked Israelis, and injured/attacked Palestinians.) Finally, they lifted the curfew except as to the vendors. Meaning, of course, that the vendors’ livelihood was taken away.
Again in contrast, we visited a Palestinian family whose home was down the hill from a settlement. He told us that the settlers have cut down his olive trees and painted on his house “death to the Arabs” and “gas the Arabs” and “kill all the Arabs.” His wife has miscarried twice, both times after being attacked by settlers. The settlers have destroyed his pipes, his telephone line. The IDF has shot at his home. His children have suffered attacked on the way home and are psychologically suffering now from the trauma of it all. Oh, and how did we get to and from his house? His entrance has been confiscated by the settlers. So we had to go in the “back way.” Let me describe this to you, if I can. Remember the days when you would go hiking for fun, and climb up steep hills and impasses made of rock with no handles or anything to hold on to? And it became not much fun? And you went down trails with branches that hit your neighbor behind you in the face if you let go too soon? That’s how this family gets to and from their house. Then he showed us the videos.
One video showed a group of 14-15 y.o. settler girls surrounding and terrorizing a group of Palestinian children on their way home from school. Due to road closures and apartheid roads, the Palestinian children only have one way home, down a rather steep set of stone stairs. The Jewish children followed them, screaming insults the entire time. The Palestinian teacher accompanying the children tried to talk to the Jewish children, to no avail.
Another video he has shows an Orthodox woman locking a Palestinian woman and her children behind a fence, all the time taunting them with “whore” chants. A third video showed Mary Baxter, a 77 year old Australian activists who was trying to escort Palestinian children home from school when a group of settlers attacked her, pushing her over a stone wall and injuring her back. As if these were not bad enough, he then showed us another video from 2003, filmed by a Palestinian ob/gyn, whom we met. The video shows hundred of settlers gathering, crossing walls, breaking gates, all accompanied by soldiers and border police. Our host told us that the settlers invaded homes, breaking in and beating Palestinians and destroying properties. Again, a vision of my Zadie in the pogroms. The IDF regularly inspects this family’s home, confiscating kitchen knives because they are weapons. Meantime, the settlers of course have their automatic rifles.
We met the ob/gyn who had filmed the pogrom. He told us that he and his 14 year old daughter were beaten by the soldiers, his daughter so severe that she went into a coma. (She recovered). Instead of focusing on this horror and raging, he began asking the ob/gyn in our group about three-dimension ultra sounds and how they need training.
Oh, by the way, I asked our guide why the Palestinian shops were welded shut, to which he replied with a smile, “security, of course.” Seems to me that who needs to be welded, curfewed, deported and arrested are the settlers.
The Palestinians responded in the mid 1970’s by forming the “National Guidance Committee,” which lead nonviolent resistance, including to the issue of the settlers. They had strikes and demonstrations. With the city center desertion we saw, we agreed with the Hebronite Palestinians that the message is clear: do not come here to visit, open business, live, etc.: go away from here. But instead, the Palestinians civil society groups are trying to renovate buildings, plant trees and rebuild. It is bad here. Zertal and Eldar say Hebron is getting it the worst. I have posted some pictures below. The first picture is of a shop welded shut by the Israelis. In the second and third pictures, you can see the netting and the objects and trash on top.
I will start the story of Hebron with what we saw as we arrived and were preparing to sit down to a nice lunch of hummus and falafel. (Side bar: hummus is not an Israeli dish, it was originally a Palestinian dish. When we joked with one of our guides about how they even stole the hummus, he replied “yes, but we will be glad to trade hummus for peace – we will agree that hummus is Israeli in return for peace.”) We were in the center of town where there was a military compound. As we watched, the soldiers stopped 3 Palestinian young men and one by one, took them inside the fenced-off compound. We stood there and watched, hoping our presence would force these young soldiers to behave. Then we heard a loud bang – like something (somebody?) being thrown against the wall of the compound. I do not know how this story ends.
Our guide then proceeded to tell us the story of Hebron. The settlers came to Hebron with a lie: they were going to a hotel to celebrate Passover. They promised the army they would leave the day after the holiday. Instead, the next day they announced that they were here to settle Hebron. And they simply stayed. Yigdal Allon armed the soldiers with weapons. Prime Minister Eshkol avoided confronting the situation and, eventually, the IDF trained the settlers in weaponry and made them a part of the Army in this strange way of avoiding evicting Jews. Six months later, the government decided to establish a Jewish neighborhood in Hebron, in the heart of the Arab city. I can only skim this appalling story. To read it in detail, I highly recommend “Lords of the Land – the War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007,” by Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar.
But for those historians amongst you, our guide also mentioned the Arab massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929. Before this, Jews and Arabs lived side by side, peacefully, until the rise of Zionists. Our guide told us that Hebronites distinguish between Jews, their friends and neighbors, and Zionists – those who came to colonize, conquer and oppress, like Baruch Goldstein and his settler friends. He talked about how they would go to each other’s weddings and funerals, how his grandfather has told him stories of the diverse community of Hebron. The week before the massacre, the Zionists raised an Israeli flag at the wailing wall. It was during a Jewish holiday and Muslim prayers. The Muslims were offended and riots broke out. There were rumors that Jews were killing Muslims and Muslims were killing Jews. Tensions were high and here our guide told us that Hebronites often wonder about the British role. Eventually, 67 Hebronite Jews were killed after which the British evacuated the entire Jewish population from Hebron. After the 1967 war, with the move to settle Hebron, the settlers launched a campaign saying “we take back our properties!” However, the descendants of the massacre victims went to the city council opposing the settlers. They were unsuccessful.
Instead, the IDF moved in, literally, into Palestinians homes and, as I indicated above, supported and protected the settlers. They deported Palestinian residents, including the elected mayor and threw some Palestinian leaders out of the country. They demolished Palestinian homes. Then came Oslo.
In connection with Oslo, Israeli troops were to redeploy from certain Palestinian inhabited areas. Remember, though, that the settlements were one of the issues that Oslo put off to be negotiated later. So when it came to Hebron, the Israeli government refused to redeploy because there are settlers living (illegally, of course) in Hebron who need protection. It was in Hebron in 1994 that Dr. Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler/terrorist, burst into a mosque and started firing at 800 worshipers. 29 Palestinians were murdered and 125 wounded. The settlers have turned Goldstein’s grave into a monument to Goldstein and view him as a hero. His gravestone reads: “he had sacrificed himself for the sake of Israel, his Torah and his land.” The Israeli government responded by instituting a curfew . . . against the Palestinians in Hebron. They then turned the mosque into a half-mosque, half synagogue.
The Palestinians then began to work to get the settlers out but the settlers respond with daily attacks on the Palestinians. The power imbalance here, with the settlers being armed not only with weapons but with the IDF, has made it impossible for the Palestinians to evict these troublesome neighbors. And what is Israel fighting for here? The rights of about 600 settlers, 250 of whom are Yeshiva students, here temporarily. There are 150,000 Palestinians in Hebron.
And how does Israel fight? There are now approximately 98 different movement restrictions on the Palestinians. These are mostly in the old city, which consists of 1 square kilometer. They include checkpoints, blocked alleys, metal gates, and rooftop monitoring, all of which I witnessed with my own, tearing eyes. Curfew, another favorite tool of oppression, was imposed from 2000-2003 and forced many businesses to close, destroying Hebron’s economy. As to the I.D. card check we witnessed above, our guide pointed out that the Israelis have a sophisticated computer system on which they could simply check out the status of a Palestinian’s I.D. card. Instead, they physically stop the Palestinians, which “I.D. check” can last anywhere from 20 minutes to 3 hours. There are arrests of many Palestinians here. In addition, 512 businesses have been closed by direct Israeli order. They are welded shut.
The Israelis also close roads to Palestinians, not Jews. Sometime this means the Palestinians cannot drive on a road, sometimes it means they cannot walk on the road. Sometimes the road is the road on which the Palestinians live. To get out of their houses, they sometimes go roof-top hopping, sometimes climb out ladders from second story windows. What if you are pregnant, disabled, elderly or have small children? I cannot imagine living like this. In a minute, I will tell you about the Hebronite Palestinian family we visited. But for now, let me continue. The settlers, as I indicated, are ultra-Orthodox fundamentalists. When they harass the Palestinians, they do so with chants such as “death to the Arabs” and “Arabs to the gas chambers.” Nice, right? Their current leader has a sticker on his care “I have already killed an Arab, have you?” When they came to Hebron, they built their Yeshiva on top of the Palestinian school. The soldiers took over another Palestinian school, as well as the women’s center.
Now as we are walking down one of the nearly-deserted streets, we see netting above us. On top of the nettings are trash, large rocks and empty plastic bags. Our guide tells us the Palestinians have to place netting over their streets because the settlers throw their trash, rocks and plastic bags filled with water, urine or even acid down onto the Palestinians. (Many settlers’ homes are built on top of Palestinian buildings.” One time, a knife was thrown, which penetrated 4 centimeters into a Palestinian’s head. No charge were ever brought. How would they know who did this? Well, there are cameras everywhere, watching. The Israelis have another cute trick. In response to a settler woman who was injured by a wire in a fruit market, they imposed curfews against the Palestinians, detaining and arresting tens of Palestinians. (Our guide claimed the injury was an accident. Even if you assume the worst and she was “stabbed” by the wire as she claimed, notice the difference in response between injured/attacked Israelis, and injured/attacked Palestinians.) Finally, they lifted the curfew except as to the vendors. Meaning, of course, that the vendors’ livelihood was taken away.
Again in contrast, we visited a Palestinian family whose home was down the hill from a settlement. He told us that the settlers have cut down his olive trees and painted on his house “death to the Arabs” and “gas the Arabs” and “kill all the Arabs.” His wife has miscarried twice, both times after being attacked by settlers. The settlers have destroyed his pipes, his telephone line. The IDF has shot at his home. His children have suffered attacked on the way home and are psychologically suffering now from the trauma of it all. Oh, and how did we get to and from his house? His entrance has been confiscated by the settlers. So we had to go in the “back way.” Let me describe this to you, if I can. Remember the days when you would go hiking for fun, and climb up steep hills and impasses made of rock with no handles or anything to hold on to? And it became not much fun? And you went down trails with branches that hit your neighbor behind you in the face if you let go too soon? That’s how this family gets to and from their house. Then he showed us the videos.
One video showed a group of 14-15 y.o. settler girls surrounding and terrorizing a group of Palestinian children on their way home from school. Due to road closures and apartheid roads, the Palestinian children only have one way home, down a rather steep set of stone stairs. The Jewish children followed them, screaming insults the entire time. The Palestinian teacher accompanying the children tried to talk to the Jewish children, to no avail.
Another video he has shows an Orthodox woman locking a Palestinian woman and her children behind a fence, all the time taunting them with “whore” chants. A third video showed Mary Baxter, a 77 year old Australian activists who was trying to escort Palestinian children home from school when a group of settlers attacked her, pushing her over a stone wall and injuring her back. As if these were not bad enough, he then showed us another video from 2003, filmed by a Palestinian ob/gyn, whom we met. The video shows hundred of settlers gathering, crossing walls, breaking gates, all accompanied by soldiers and border police. Our host told us that the settlers invaded homes, breaking in and beating Palestinians and destroying properties. Again, a vision of my Zadie in the pogroms. The IDF regularly inspects this family’s home, confiscating kitchen knives because they are weapons. Meantime, the settlers of course have their automatic rifles.
We met the ob/gyn who had filmed the pogrom. He told us that he and his 14 year old daughter were beaten by the soldiers, his daughter so severe that she went into a coma. (She recovered). Instead of focusing on this horror and raging, he began asking the ob/gyn in our group about three-dimension ultra sounds and how they need training.
Oh, by the way, I asked our guide why the Palestinian shops were welded shut, to which he replied with a smile, “security, of course.” Seems to me that who needs to be welded, curfewed, deported and arrested are the settlers.
The Palestinians responded in the mid 1970’s by forming the “National Guidance Committee,” which lead nonviolent resistance, including to the issue of the settlers. They had strikes and demonstrations. With the city center desertion we saw, we agreed with the Hebronite Palestinians that the message is clear: do not come here to visit, open business, live, etc.: go away from here. But instead, the Palestinians civil society groups are trying to renovate buildings, plant trees and rebuild. It is bad here. Zertal and Eldar say Hebron is getting it the worst. I have posted some pictures below. The first picture is of a shop welded shut by the Israelis. In the second and third pictures, you can see the netting and the objects and trash on top.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Rabbi Lerner and Gottlieb and BDS
For those of you who are still struggling with the "facts on the ground," the ethnic cleansing, the apartheid state or whether the Palestinians are simply feeding us "propaganda," while I understand your pain, I invite you to read the following article:
http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2010/01/11/gaza-one-year-later/
This cannot continue.
http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2010/01/11/gaza-one-year-later/
This cannot continue.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
A nation like all the other nations, a/k/a "I have a dream" - and this is not it.
So I was not going to blog today. All we were going to do was an historical tour of East Jerusalem. But what we experienced was so outrageous that I decided to share it. I have heard and read about overt racism before but never before have I had the pleasure to be an eyewitness. We are based in Ramallah and so we got on the bus to go to Jerusalem. Once we got to the checkpoint, the bus stopped. We were then informed that all the Palestinians had to get off the bus and walk through while the rest of us (i.e. white Europeans and Americans) could ride through. I was appalled and wanted to get out and walk in solidarity but the door shut too quickly (or I was in shock too long). Can you imagine what this feels like? I will help you. Imagine you are on a bus from Detroit to Ann Arbor for you Michigan folks or the Upper East Side to Brooklyn for you New Yorkers or perhaps from San Diego to Oceanside. Pick a spot about a 30-40 minute drive. Then imagine that you are told “all the Jews must get off the bus and cross this [imaginary] line on foot.” You see? I bet anyone who was in the Holocaust sees indeed. What if you are elderly and walk with a cane? What if you are in a wheelchair? What if you are pregnant? What if you have small children? We were with a group from a Norwegian trade union who for the past 10 days have been on the same type of eye-opening tour we have been on. While we sat waiting for our Palestinian friends to rejoin us, we all talked about how appalled and shocked we were and how we wished we had, as a group, gotten off the bus with the Palestinians. It took the Palestinians over an hour to get through the checkpoint. (And lest you think that this is about security, i.e. lest you buy into the Israeli propaganda machine, keep in mind that there are checkpoints all throughout the Occupied Territories, 600 of them, at which women are prevented from reaching the hospital while in labor, at which children are prevented from getting to school on time, if at all, at which Palestinians are prevented from getting to work, and at which, from a report in September from an Asian human rights agency, little girls are molested.)
Once in East Jerusalem, our Israeli tour guide (a former IDF soldier), told us that the quote above was the goal of the Zionists – that Israel would be a nation like other nations. The only problem was that while, for example, the French have France, the Jews had no land. In contrast, and interestingly, the Palestinians had the land but no real sense of nationality until, like in Europe, the idea of a nation caught on in the Middle East, simultaneously with and in part in response to, Zionism and British colonialism. It was also the time that other British colonies were beginning their fight for independence. Thinking they were clever, the British made promises to both the Jews and the Arabs. The Zionists were no fonder of the British than were the Arabs, but they were able to build a relationship with the British and agreed to back them in the war in order to get military training, weaponry and, ultimately, the land. From yesterday’s blog, you should now know the history but our guide today added an interesting twist. You see, the Zionists were all Europeans, as was the UN. This meant that they were from the same world whereas the Arabs were the “other,” and we all know how westerners treat the other. Hence, the Israelis were much better equipped to deal with the British than were the Palestinians.
At any rate, you also now know that the majority of the land was given for the Jewish state via the UN partition plan. Today, we learned that the new Jewish state included the Galilee (read: water) and most of the coast (read: fertile) so that what was left for the Palestinians was not a viable state at all and that land trick is crucial. And, following the 1948 conquest, the Israelis had possession of 78% of the land, with over 600 Palestinian villages destroyed. Hopefully, by now you understand the ethnic cleansing that occurred. If not, we will talk.
At any rate, remember the absentee law that several of our speakers have discussed? It is also known as the “present-absent” law. This is the one that says don’t dare leave your home or the state of Israel will declare it abandoned state land. Once the Israelis conquered Jerusalem in 1967, this absentee law applied here as well. Moreover, Israel annexed Jerusalem, in contrast to its refusal to do so with Gaza or the West Bank. Why? In order to “keep Jerusalem ours.” (According to our guide, this annexation, by the way, is not recognized by the international community but is seen as one more illegal act.) The plan is popularly known as “Judaizing.” Scary – like reverse Nazism. Yes, and our guide also told us about the ceremonies he did as a soldier to link in his head his Judaism and nationalism. Here’s how that worked. You have probably seen the pictures of Hezbollah with the soldiers holding guns and the Koran. Our ex-IDF soldier told us that during many ceremonies, the soldiers would hold their automatic weapons in one hand and a Torah in another.
Let me describe some additional logistics. Remember yesterday when I told you how Jeff described the “facts on the ground” – the creation of a physical situation that negates the possibility of a two-state solution. This is what we heard about again today. The open land that is really beyond Jerusalem is being filled with what are referred to as “ring neighborhoods,” to encircle the city with masses of Jewish settlements and then, as we said yesterday, connect the settlements, isolate the Palestinian villages and bisect any proposed West Bank Palestinian state.
In addition to re-explaining Oslo to us, and the crazy area A, B and C plan, our guide began telling us about scary right-wing organizations in the city of Jerusalem, one of which was originally backed by Ariel Sharon. Now you must keep in mind as we talk about crazy right-wingers here that it is not so much that they are outrageous and irrational, that sort of group exists in every population. It is that the state of Israel is 150% per cent behind them. This was obvious in Jerusalem and was painfully present in Hebron (which, to be frank, I have not yet blogged about because it is huge, painful and beyond all that I have already told you.)
So here, Sharon bought a house, still standing of course, and an organization called Ateret Cohanim was started whose goal it is to Judaize Jerusalem. They began to take homes in which Palestinians live. Now the trick here (there is always a trick) is that these Palestinians do not actually own these homes. Why not? Because they are refugees that fled their own villages in 1948, to which they are not allowed to return. Instead of taking care of the refugee population it created, the state allows these Ateret Cohanim members to evict the Palestinians at gun point and then the state issues a declaration that the homes are state land. There is no trial, no evidence, no judge (not that the Israeli justice system ever works for Palestinians) just a declaration issued by the state. The Ateret Cohanim then hire private guards to “guard” the house from the Palestinians.
Here’s another bizarre twist: sometimes the Ateret Cohanim encounter a Palestinian that actually does own the home. If the Palestinian won’t sell the whole house to them, the Ateret Cohanim may just buy the roof. Our guide told us this happens when, for example, the Palestinian is perhaps desperately in need of medical care or expensive surgery. Once the Ateret Cohanim are established on the roof (there are Jewish settlements built on the roofs of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem and Hebron that we saw, clearly marked with Israeli flags flying), they start the harassment of the Palestinian family. This may include dumping garbage and dirty diapers, banging on doors in the middle of the night, screaming and calling the police, at which point guess who gets arrested?
This, of course, creates tension, to say the least. Our guide pointed out several kippah-wearing young men that past us on the street (for those of you who are not Jewish, this is the skull cap) who, our former IDF soldier guide told us, are always armed. After all, they might run into a dangerous Palestinian on the street.
Also, as we now know, there are home demolitions always, with half the homes in East Jerusalem under a demolition order and 100 houses a year demolished. And in Jerusalem, Israel is using archeology as an excuse to demolition additional Palestinian homes. Here’s how it works. Jerusalem, a city conquered by many different people over thousands of years, consists of layer upon layer of civilizations. So, in order to discover the “City of David” and other “precious” relics (apparently more precious than human lives), the state authorizes digs, in places on which Palestinian homes sit. Either the Palestinian homes are destroyed or the excavation is done under the houses. Of course, the latter leaves the home completely unstable so Israel tells the Palestinians they should leave. And if the excavators find some important relic, they are allowed to evict the Palestinian residents. Sometimes the state pays the Palestinians but remember, most of them are refugees who do not own the home to begin with. Further, the state can always claim the homes are illegal – remember Jeff’s talk I posted yesterday about how no permits are issued to Palestinians so anything they build is designated “illegal.” Thus, the state can rationalize grabbing the land. And you should really know that when you visit the Western Wall, the plaza directly in front of it – the one that is so clear of any structures – used to be home to a slew of Palestinian homes. Those people are now in a refugee camp.
Who can live like this? So the Palestinians leave, and voila, you now have the Judaization of Jerusalem – more land, less Palestinians. As you can imagine, we are all exhausted. Not necessarily physically but emotionally. In fact, we are traumatized ourselves. How can this be happening? And how can it be Jews committing these crimes? And how can we sit by and allow it to continue? That is the real question. I know my answer.
Tomorrow we are going to the Golan Heights and then to the rap concert benefit for the family forced to live under a tent.
In the meantime, below are two pictures of graffiti the Palestinians have painted on the wall. By the way, some Palestinians hate this - they believe it is beautifying an evil thing. Interesting discussions. Anyway, the little cartoon is "Handala" (with some added, typical teenage graffiti) a symbol of Palestinian resistance and the plight of the refugees, whose face you will never see until the occupation ends. His creator, Nafi Al-Ali, was 10 when his family became a victim of the ethnic cleansing and ended up in a refugee camp. Loved and hated for his cartoons and brutal honesty, Al-Ali was assasinated in 1987. You can read more about Handala and Nafi Al-Ali at http://www.handala.org/handala/index.html.
The second picture is a play on MLK's famous "I have a dream" quote.
Once in East Jerusalem, our Israeli tour guide (a former IDF soldier), told us that the quote above was the goal of the Zionists – that Israel would be a nation like other nations. The only problem was that while, for example, the French have France, the Jews had no land. In contrast, and interestingly, the Palestinians had the land but no real sense of nationality until, like in Europe, the idea of a nation caught on in the Middle East, simultaneously with and in part in response to, Zionism and British colonialism. It was also the time that other British colonies were beginning their fight for independence. Thinking they were clever, the British made promises to both the Jews and the Arabs. The Zionists were no fonder of the British than were the Arabs, but they were able to build a relationship with the British and agreed to back them in the war in order to get military training, weaponry and, ultimately, the land. From yesterday’s blog, you should now know the history but our guide today added an interesting twist. You see, the Zionists were all Europeans, as was the UN. This meant that they were from the same world whereas the Arabs were the “other,” and we all know how westerners treat the other. Hence, the Israelis were much better equipped to deal with the British than were the Palestinians.
At any rate, you also now know that the majority of the land was given for the Jewish state via the UN partition plan. Today, we learned that the new Jewish state included the Galilee (read: water) and most of the coast (read: fertile) so that what was left for the Palestinians was not a viable state at all and that land trick is crucial. And, following the 1948 conquest, the Israelis had possession of 78% of the land, with over 600 Palestinian villages destroyed. Hopefully, by now you understand the ethnic cleansing that occurred. If not, we will talk.
At any rate, remember the absentee law that several of our speakers have discussed? It is also known as the “present-absent” law. This is the one that says don’t dare leave your home or the state of Israel will declare it abandoned state land. Once the Israelis conquered Jerusalem in 1967, this absentee law applied here as well. Moreover, Israel annexed Jerusalem, in contrast to its refusal to do so with Gaza or the West Bank. Why? In order to “keep Jerusalem ours.” (According to our guide, this annexation, by the way, is not recognized by the international community but is seen as one more illegal act.) The plan is popularly known as “Judaizing.” Scary – like reverse Nazism. Yes, and our guide also told us about the ceremonies he did as a soldier to link in his head his Judaism and nationalism. Here’s how that worked. You have probably seen the pictures of Hezbollah with the soldiers holding guns and the Koran. Our ex-IDF soldier told us that during many ceremonies, the soldiers would hold their automatic weapons in one hand and a Torah in another.
Let me describe some additional logistics. Remember yesterday when I told you how Jeff described the “facts on the ground” – the creation of a physical situation that negates the possibility of a two-state solution. This is what we heard about again today. The open land that is really beyond Jerusalem is being filled with what are referred to as “ring neighborhoods,” to encircle the city with masses of Jewish settlements and then, as we said yesterday, connect the settlements, isolate the Palestinian villages and bisect any proposed West Bank Palestinian state.
In addition to re-explaining Oslo to us, and the crazy area A, B and C plan, our guide began telling us about scary right-wing organizations in the city of Jerusalem, one of which was originally backed by Ariel Sharon. Now you must keep in mind as we talk about crazy right-wingers here that it is not so much that they are outrageous and irrational, that sort of group exists in every population. It is that the state of Israel is 150% per cent behind them. This was obvious in Jerusalem and was painfully present in Hebron (which, to be frank, I have not yet blogged about because it is huge, painful and beyond all that I have already told you.)
So here, Sharon bought a house, still standing of course, and an organization called Ateret Cohanim was started whose goal it is to Judaize Jerusalem. They began to take homes in which Palestinians live. Now the trick here (there is always a trick) is that these Palestinians do not actually own these homes. Why not? Because they are refugees that fled their own villages in 1948, to which they are not allowed to return. Instead of taking care of the refugee population it created, the state allows these Ateret Cohanim members to evict the Palestinians at gun point and then the state issues a declaration that the homes are state land. There is no trial, no evidence, no judge (not that the Israeli justice system ever works for Palestinians) just a declaration issued by the state. The Ateret Cohanim then hire private guards to “guard” the house from the Palestinians.
Here’s another bizarre twist: sometimes the Ateret Cohanim encounter a Palestinian that actually does own the home. If the Palestinian won’t sell the whole house to them, the Ateret Cohanim may just buy the roof. Our guide told us this happens when, for example, the Palestinian is perhaps desperately in need of medical care or expensive surgery. Once the Ateret Cohanim are established on the roof (there are Jewish settlements built on the roofs of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem and Hebron that we saw, clearly marked with Israeli flags flying), they start the harassment of the Palestinian family. This may include dumping garbage and dirty diapers, banging on doors in the middle of the night, screaming and calling the police, at which point guess who gets arrested?
This, of course, creates tension, to say the least. Our guide pointed out several kippah-wearing young men that past us on the street (for those of you who are not Jewish, this is the skull cap) who, our former IDF soldier guide told us, are always armed. After all, they might run into a dangerous Palestinian on the street.
Also, as we now know, there are home demolitions always, with half the homes in East Jerusalem under a demolition order and 100 houses a year demolished. And in Jerusalem, Israel is using archeology as an excuse to demolition additional Palestinian homes. Here’s how it works. Jerusalem, a city conquered by many different people over thousands of years, consists of layer upon layer of civilizations. So, in order to discover the “City of David” and other “precious” relics (apparently more precious than human lives), the state authorizes digs, in places on which Palestinian homes sit. Either the Palestinian homes are destroyed or the excavation is done under the houses. Of course, the latter leaves the home completely unstable so Israel tells the Palestinians they should leave. And if the excavators find some important relic, they are allowed to evict the Palestinian residents. Sometimes the state pays the Palestinians but remember, most of them are refugees who do not own the home to begin with. Further, the state can always claim the homes are illegal – remember Jeff’s talk I posted yesterday about how no permits are issued to Palestinians so anything they build is designated “illegal.” Thus, the state can rationalize grabbing the land. And you should really know that when you visit the Western Wall, the plaza directly in front of it – the one that is so clear of any structures – used to be home to a slew of Palestinian homes. Those people are now in a refugee camp.
Who can live like this? So the Palestinians leave, and voila, you now have the Judaization of Jerusalem – more land, less Palestinians. As you can imagine, we are all exhausted. Not necessarily physically but emotionally. In fact, we are traumatized ourselves. How can this be happening? And how can it be Jews committing these crimes? And how can we sit by and allow it to continue? That is the real question. I know my answer.
Tomorrow we are going to the Golan Heights and then to the rap concert benefit for the family forced to live under a tent.
In the meantime, below are two pictures of graffiti the Palestinians have painted on the wall. By the way, some Palestinians hate this - they believe it is beautifying an evil thing. Interesting discussions. Anyway, the little cartoon is "Handala" (with some added, typical teenage graffiti) a symbol of Palestinian resistance and the plight of the refugees, whose face you will never see until the occupation ends. His creator, Nafi Al-Ali, was 10 when his family became a victim of the ethnic cleansing and ended up in a refugee camp. Loved and hated for his cartoons and brutal honesty, Al-Ali was assasinated in 1987. You can read more about Handala and Nafi Al-Ali at http://www.handala.org/handala/index.html.
The second picture is a play on MLK's famous "I have a dream" quote.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
More Heartbreak and More Nonviolent Resistance
So, it has been a while since we last spoke. For the most part, that is due to the enormous amount that we have done over the last few days. I will be breaking these days up into separate posts over the next several days. Otherwise, it will overwhelm you as it has overwhelmed most of us.
The situation is dire, this is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportion from which most of the world, and the United States in particular, has chosen to turn away. This I will not do and this I ask that you not allow yourself to do. For whatever I thought I knew after studying this topic for years pales in comparison to the suffering I have witnessed. Whatever cringing I may have done at the terms “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid” when used in connection with a state I am supposed to love has turned into utter rage and I will not, nor can I, be complicit via silence. So let me tell you these stories.
This posting will be a combination of stories we heard at Dheisheh refugee camp, at which we stayed, a tour of the infamous wall, Jewish settlements and other East Jerusalem issues that Jeff Halper of ICAHD conducted, and the story of Badil, the Palestinian refugee rights organization. Lets begin.
ICAHD
Jeff Halper is one of my favorite people on this topic. His book, “An Israeli in Palestine,” was on the bibliography I circulated. I will try to hit the highlights of what Jeff told and showed us but I highly recommend their website and his book.
The infamous wall is twice as high as the Berlin wall. Moreover, unlike the Berlin wall, which cut Berlin in half on its east/west border, the wall here snakes around at Israel’s convenience. Houses were destroyed to build the wall. On Jeff’s tour, we focused on its insidious nature with respect to Jerusalem, where the wall cuts into neighborhoods, leaving half in East Jerusalem and half in the West Bank. As Jeff put it, the wall is on a “gerrymandered” border. This presents numerous problems for the Palestinians. Once you become a resident of the West Bank as opposed to a Jerusalem resident, the Israelis get to confiscate your Jerusalem identity card. This means, for example, if your family is in Jerusalem and you are now in the West Bank or if your school or job is in Jerusalem and you are now in the West Bank, you will not be able to visit your family, go to school or get to work without special permits, which are rarely issued. Moreover, a Jerusalem identify card comes with health care, a West Bank identify card does not. If you are Jewish, of course, and “living” (quite illegally, by the way) in a settlement in the West Bank, of course you are a citizen of the state of Israel and so suffer no consequences but instead gain from the confiscation of additional Palestinians land (and water). Moreover, you will now lose urban services such as mail (the Israeli government will not name streets in the West Bank) and garbage collection.
Here’s another great hook: last year, for a Palestinian population of 230,000, the Israeli government issued 18 building permits. Eighteen. That’s it. Oh, and by the way, you must pay a fee to the government when you apply for the permit, not when it is issued. Fees can be up to $60,000 and are not returnable when (not if) the government refuses to grant your permit. What is the rationale behind this? Well first you have to understand that, Jews don’t need to apply for permits to build because the land on which Israel Jews live is 94% of the land in Israel and is owned by the state, with the JNF as its custodian. Only Jews can lease or build on this land. So, the Israeli government decides where new neighborhoods will be built and contractors bid on construction jobs. Since contractors must pay the application fee, the Israeli government claims it is fair and equitable to charge a Palestinian family the same application fee the contractors must pay. Of course, this rationale leaves out a major point: a contractor will build a neighborhood and make a profit from the sale of each structure he builds even after he pays $60,000. The Palestinian family is looking to build one home. The state also argues that it has no master plan for the Palestinians. Thus, it cannot issue permits because it does not know what will be zoned residential, what commercial, etc. I do not need to explain the egregious inequity here.
Now also, you must know that Israel has actually annexed East Jerusalem, something it will not do with respect to Gaza and the West Bank. And here, the Palestinians who do not suddenly find themselves living in the West Bank, have permanent residence status, not citizenship. So, an Israeli Jew like Jeff can live here, go back to Minnesota to see his family, come back here after a day, a month, a year, a hundred years, with no restrictions on his movement. His Palestinian friends, however, must constantly prove to the Minister of the Interior that Jerusalem is the “center of their life.” What does this mean? Well, if a Palestinian leaves Jerusalem to study, to work, to visit a sick parent, after a period of time, Israel decides that the Palestinian has moved the center of h/her life to somewhere else. The consequences of this state declaration are that the Palestinian loses h/her residency and they cannot come back to Israel. Period. Now get a load of this next part: there are numerous Palestinians who still own land from before 1948 but if they leave the city, they cannot ever return to their land.
Do you wonder why we all believe Jeff when he says that the goal here is to grab as much Palestinian land as possible with as few Palestinians as possible?
Here is also where the settlements come in. Jeff explained that most settlers (we will talk about the crazy Hebron ones later) think they are just living in Jerusalem. Israelis, like the rest of the world, apparently do not really think these things through. This means that Israel has reached its goal of getting “facts on the ground,” meaning that Israel has established such permanency that it can insist that negotiations take place around issues like the settlements instead of dealing with the settlements. Moreover, the state has instituted a road system that integrates the Jewish settlements into the West Bank proper and creates, true to Ariel Sharon’s concept, an east west link to break the north/south access. In other words, the West Bank has now been carved up into segments and there is no longer coherent territory on which to make a Palestinian state. So when Israel says it has no one to negotiate with, what you should really hear is that a two-state solution is no longer possible because Israel has succeeded in creating “facts on the ground.” This is confusing to read but becomes clear when you look at maps. I recommend the ones found at http://www.ochaopt.org.
Now I have yet to say anything about house demolition. Remember that Palestinians cannot obtain permits and have not been able to for two generations. A generation is approximately 20 years. So imagine living in a home in which you could not add or repair or owning land on which you cannot build for 40 years. Of course, this is the impossible so Palestinians build/maintain anyway and then the Israelis issue a demolition order. Jeff called the denial of permits + the demolition orders the “quiet transfer” of the Palestinian population.
Jeff then introduced us to a family living under a tent because their East Jerusalem house (in which they have lived since the grandparents were “evacuated” from a small village near Tel Aviv in 1948) has been confiscated by settlers (complete with Israeli flags flying from the house). In the long court battle to get their home back, among other things, (a) the settlers have invaded their home at 1:30 a.m.; (b) a judge has agreed that the Palestinian family has original documents but the paper on which the documents are printed are too old: (c) the family was evicted at 4:15 a.m. with all of their furniture destroyed and family members arrested; and (d) the police told the Palestinian family that they should “go to Jordan.” We are attending a free rap concert to benefit this family on Thursday evening.
I have really only skirted the issues here because I have much to write, because I am outraged, because I have seen suffering that I never thought was possible, let alone suffering that Jews are inflicting. ICAHD and Jeff are great resources for those of you willing to read more. The website is www.icahd.org. I highly recommend it.
Dheisheh Camp
Although we stayed and toured this camp and there was much to see, I will focus on two things. First, one personal story we heard and second, the cultural center the young people have started to work for an end to the occupation through the arts.
In telling her family’s personal narrative, AJ also gave us a history lesson. In the late 1800’s, when the Zionist movement was beginning, Palestine was part of what was called “Big Syria,” consisting of Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Palestine. After WWI, with the British “mandate” (read: colonization), the Palestinians held nonviolent demonstrations to resist the occupation and, by 1929, resist the new Jewish immigrants to the land who were determined to take the land. Due to this resistance, in the 1930’s the British reduced the number of Jewish immigrants allowed into Palestine. The settlers continued to insist upon entry and land confiscation which led, in 1936, to “the Arab Revolt.” This revolt consisted of a six month strike that closed down everything and included demonstrations in the street. The British realized they were losing control and so allowed the deportation of the Palestinian leadership. An offer of 30-40% of the land was made to the Zionist leadership, who rejected it. And then came the Holocaust and the closing of the world’s doors to the Jewish refugees.
Clearly, Jewish immigration to Palestine increases after WWII. The British become overwhelmed, the Zionist groups such as Haganah, the Irgun and the Stern Gang become more revolutionary and terrorist like (see Ilan Pappe’s “A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two People”, also on the bibliography) and the British announced that they will withdraw, and handed the whole mess over to the United Nations. (At this time, the UN was a newly established organization that had zero experience with anything, let alone a crisis of this proportion.) By 1947, the Jewish population in Palestine consisted of only 30% of the total population. Without discussing the idea with the Palestinian majority, the UN passed Resolution 181, “partitioning” (read: confiscating) the land into two countries, 56% to the Jewish minority and 44% to the Arab majority. What a deal. It is at this time that we see the beginning of the ethnic cleansing, the massacres, the razing of the villages. The Israelis would march into a village, gather the people into the mosque or its yard, split the men from the women, sometimes shooting the men in front of their wives or sometimes taking the men away and shooting them or sometimes letting the men go. Some villages, hearing the stories of massacres and rapes and razings, fled from terror. Do you know what I thought of when I was listening to this story? My Zadie hiding in an oven from the Cossacks during the pogroms.
After fleeing sometimes 2 or 3 times, some families ended up in UN refugee camps like Dheisheh, including AJ’s family. In 1948, the UN, believing the families would be allowed to return home, put each family in a tent. When 1000 people died from living in tents through a particularly cold winter in 1948, the UN decided to give each family a “house” – and I use the term loosely. These houses were 9 x 9 per family, with a public bathroom. I have posted pictures below. The first of the public bathroom, the second of 1/2 of the two-family structure.
Also, in December of 1948, the UN passed Resolution 194, which gives the Palestinians refugees the right to return or to compensation, like every other refugee population in the world. Of course, this has not happened. But as AJ asked us, isn’t it a basic human rights to live where you want? Hey, how about being allowed to live in your house, build on your land, travel to see family, travel to school, travel to work – what radical concepts.
Meanwhile, in contrast to the “terrorists” stereotypes, the Palestinians of Dheisheh Refugee Camp responded by starting a cultural center. It was planned by one man while he was in prison (most Palestinian men are imprisoned at one time or another in their life time, a topic discussed on day 1). Now, the cultural center includes many departments: dance, music, art, health, sports, a diabetes center, and a women’s center. Really, while I am busy being outraged, they are establishing cultural centers. And this brings me to Badil.
So Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & refugee Rights was established in 1998 to support the development of a popular refugee lobby for the right of return. Badil means “alternative.” The Badil representative explained to us that the conflict did not start in 1967 nor is it a territorial conflict about slashing a piece of land. Instead, it is about basic human rights, like the right to live. Right now, 2/3 of Palestinians are refugees. So, when speaking about a solution for the future, such a solution must include this population.
Now over and over again we have heard, from Palestinians and Israelis alike, that the peace “process” is merely a façade. One of the biggest complaints is that Oslo avoided the major issues, including the issues of the refugees’ right of return. In fact, out of 5000 pages, there is only one line regarding the refugees and that instructs the parties to deal with the issue later. The Badil representative told us that this means the cause of this disease was left in place to grow.
So, a group of activists started Badil to campaign on behalf of the people, starting with the refugee communities in and out of Palestine. Badil has grown in their projects but what I want to explain to you is that Badil does not care about what sovereignty is installed in this land. They are concerned with human rights. They are asking the world to look at the convention on human rights, refugee law, and UN Resolution 181.
Now, you might ask, why do the refugees simply settle permanently in the other Arab countries? Lets talk about what rights refugees have and what rights they do not have. The refugees appear to have three choices. They can return and be compensated; they can stay in the host country; or they can choose a third country in which to live. The problem is that the only legal right they have is pursuant to Resolution 181: to return and be compensated. Under international law, no other country besides Israel is bound to give them refuge.
But, the counter argument goes, all the Jewish people want is this one tiny piece of land. Why won’t the other Arab countries take “them?” Badil’s answer: Israel is very small but the Palestinians only have one home. You can buy or sell anything but you can not buy or sell a true home. In truth, just because I want something of yours certainly does not entitle me to take what is yours. Would any of us tolerate such violence?
But there is good news. You see, according to Badiul, 84% of Israeli Jews live on 16% of Israel proper. That means, there is an absolute possibility for people to return. But, you may ask, what about the Israeli communities that now stand on destroyed Arab villages? Don’t the Arabs want to destroy these? Badil says, and we heard this repeatedly, that the Palestinians believe that the Jews and the Arabs can live side by side. So Badil’s proposal is to build new housing communities for those refugees who want to return. Likewise, where there are Israeli institutions built on top of destroyed Palestinian villages, say, for example, Tel Aviv University, Badil has quite a creative and nonviolent solution: open the doors of Tel Aviv University to the descendants of the village that used to stand on this land to study for free.
Badil’s message? We should not care about institutions or sovereignties. Sovereignties have come and gone over this land for thousands of years. Empires have risen and empires have fallen. What we should be dedicating our energies to is to the people and their rights. To building a free place to live, not a militaristic and oppressive state. Are we ready?
The situation is dire, this is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportion from which most of the world, and the United States in particular, has chosen to turn away. This I will not do and this I ask that you not allow yourself to do. For whatever I thought I knew after studying this topic for years pales in comparison to the suffering I have witnessed. Whatever cringing I may have done at the terms “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid” when used in connection with a state I am supposed to love has turned into utter rage and I will not, nor can I, be complicit via silence. So let me tell you these stories.
This posting will be a combination of stories we heard at Dheisheh refugee camp, at which we stayed, a tour of the infamous wall, Jewish settlements and other East Jerusalem issues that Jeff Halper of ICAHD conducted, and the story of Badil, the Palestinian refugee rights organization. Lets begin.
ICAHD
Jeff Halper is one of my favorite people on this topic. His book, “An Israeli in Palestine,” was on the bibliography I circulated. I will try to hit the highlights of what Jeff told and showed us but I highly recommend their website and his book.
The infamous wall is twice as high as the Berlin wall. Moreover, unlike the Berlin wall, which cut Berlin in half on its east/west border, the wall here snakes around at Israel’s convenience. Houses were destroyed to build the wall. On Jeff’s tour, we focused on its insidious nature with respect to Jerusalem, where the wall cuts into neighborhoods, leaving half in East Jerusalem and half in the West Bank. As Jeff put it, the wall is on a “gerrymandered” border. This presents numerous problems for the Palestinians. Once you become a resident of the West Bank as opposed to a Jerusalem resident, the Israelis get to confiscate your Jerusalem identity card. This means, for example, if your family is in Jerusalem and you are now in the West Bank or if your school or job is in Jerusalem and you are now in the West Bank, you will not be able to visit your family, go to school or get to work without special permits, which are rarely issued. Moreover, a Jerusalem identify card comes with health care, a West Bank identify card does not. If you are Jewish, of course, and “living” (quite illegally, by the way) in a settlement in the West Bank, of course you are a citizen of the state of Israel and so suffer no consequences but instead gain from the confiscation of additional Palestinians land (and water). Moreover, you will now lose urban services such as mail (the Israeli government will not name streets in the West Bank) and garbage collection.
Here’s another great hook: last year, for a Palestinian population of 230,000, the Israeli government issued 18 building permits. Eighteen. That’s it. Oh, and by the way, you must pay a fee to the government when you apply for the permit, not when it is issued. Fees can be up to $60,000 and are not returnable when (not if) the government refuses to grant your permit. What is the rationale behind this? Well first you have to understand that, Jews don’t need to apply for permits to build because the land on which Israel Jews live is 94% of the land in Israel and is owned by the state, with the JNF as its custodian. Only Jews can lease or build on this land. So, the Israeli government decides where new neighborhoods will be built and contractors bid on construction jobs. Since contractors must pay the application fee, the Israeli government claims it is fair and equitable to charge a Palestinian family the same application fee the contractors must pay. Of course, this rationale leaves out a major point: a contractor will build a neighborhood and make a profit from the sale of each structure he builds even after he pays $60,000. The Palestinian family is looking to build one home. The state also argues that it has no master plan for the Palestinians. Thus, it cannot issue permits because it does not know what will be zoned residential, what commercial, etc. I do not need to explain the egregious inequity here.
Now also, you must know that Israel has actually annexed East Jerusalem, something it will not do with respect to Gaza and the West Bank. And here, the Palestinians who do not suddenly find themselves living in the West Bank, have permanent residence status, not citizenship. So, an Israeli Jew like Jeff can live here, go back to Minnesota to see his family, come back here after a day, a month, a year, a hundred years, with no restrictions on his movement. His Palestinian friends, however, must constantly prove to the Minister of the Interior that Jerusalem is the “center of their life.” What does this mean? Well, if a Palestinian leaves Jerusalem to study, to work, to visit a sick parent, after a period of time, Israel decides that the Palestinian has moved the center of h/her life to somewhere else. The consequences of this state declaration are that the Palestinian loses h/her residency and they cannot come back to Israel. Period. Now get a load of this next part: there are numerous Palestinians who still own land from before 1948 but if they leave the city, they cannot ever return to their land.
Do you wonder why we all believe Jeff when he says that the goal here is to grab as much Palestinian land as possible with as few Palestinians as possible?
Here is also where the settlements come in. Jeff explained that most settlers (we will talk about the crazy Hebron ones later) think they are just living in Jerusalem. Israelis, like the rest of the world, apparently do not really think these things through. This means that Israel has reached its goal of getting “facts on the ground,” meaning that Israel has established such permanency that it can insist that negotiations take place around issues like the settlements instead of dealing with the settlements. Moreover, the state has instituted a road system that integrates the Jewish settlements into the West Bank proper and creates, true to Ariel Sharon’s concept, an east west link to break the north/south access. In other words, the West Bank has now been carved up into segments and there is no longer coherent territory on which to make a Palestinian state. So when Israel says it has no one to negotiate with, what you should really hear is that a two-state solution is no longer possible because Israel has succeeded in creating “facts on the ground.” This is confusing to read but becomes clear when you look at maps. I recommend the ones found at http://www.ochaopt.org.
Now I have yet to say anything about house demolition. Remember that Palestinians cannot obtain permits and have not been able to for two generations. A generation is approximately 20 years. So imagine living in a home in which you could not add or repair or owning land on which you cannot build for 40 years. Of course, this is the impossible so Palestinians build/maintain anyway and then the Israelis issue a demolition order. Jeff called the denial of permits + the demolition orders the “quiet transfer” of the Palestinian population.
Jeff then introduced us to a family living under a tent because their East Jerusalem house (in which they have lived since the grandparents were “evacuated” from a small village near Tel Aviv in 1948) has been confiscated by settlers (complete with Israeli flags flying from the house). In the long court battle to get their home back, among other things, (a) the settlers have invaded their home at 1:30 a.m.; (b) a judge has agreed that the Palestinian family has original documents but the paper on which the documents are printed are too old: (c) the family was evicted at 4:15 a.m. with all of their furniture destroyed and family members arrested; and (d) the police told the Palestinian family that they should “go to Jordan.” We are attending a free rap concert to benefit this family on Thursday evening.
I have really only skirted the issues here because I have much to write, because I am outraged, because I have seen suffering that I never thought was possible, let alone suffering that Jews are inflicting. ICAHD and Jeff are great resources for those of you willing to read more. The website is www.icahd.org. I highly recommend it.
Dheisheh Camp
Although we stayed and toured this camp and there was much to see, I will focus on two things. First, one personal story we heard and second, the cultural center the young people have started to work for an end to the occupation through the arts.
In telling her family’s personal narrative, AJ also gave us a history lesson. In the late 1800’s, when the Zionist movement was beginning, Palestine was part of what was called “Big Syria,” consisting of Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Palestine. After WWI, with the British “mandate” (read: colonization), the Palestinians held nonviolent demonstrations to resist the occupation and, by 1929, resist the new Jewish immigrants to the land who were determined to take the land. Due to this resistance, in the 1930’s the British reduced the number of Jewish immigrants allowed into Palestine. The settlers continued to insist upon entry and land confiscation which led, in 1936, to “the Arab Revolt.” This revolt consisted of a six month strike that closed down everything and included demonstrations in the street. The British realized they were losing control and so allowed the deportation of the Palestinian leadership. An offer of 30-40% of the land was made to the Zionist leadership, who rejected it. And then came the Holocaust and the closing of the world’s doors to the Jewish refugees.
Clearly, Jewish immigration to Palestine increases after WWII. The British become overwhelmed, the Zionist groups such as Haganah, the Irgun and the Stern Gang become more revolutionary and terrorist like (see Ilan Pappe’s “A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two People”, also on the bibliography) and the British announced that they will withdraw, and handed the whole mess over to the United Nations. (At this time, the UN was a newly established organization that had zero experience with anything, let alone a crisis of this proportion.) By 1947, the Jewish population in Palestine consisted of only 30% of the total population. Without discussing the idea with the Palestinian majority, the UN passed Resolution 181, “partitioning” (read: confiscating) the land into two countries, 56% to the Jewish minority and 44% to the Arab majority. What a deal. It is at this time that we see the beginning of the ethnic cleansing, the massacres, the razing of the villages. The Israelis would march into a village, gather the people into the mosque or its yard, split the men from the women, sometimes shooting the men in front of their wives or sometimes taking the men away and shooting them or sometimes letting the men go. Some villages, hearing the stories of massacres and rapes and razings, fled from terror. Do you know what I thought of when I was listening to this story? My Zadie hiding in an oven from the Cossacks during the pogroms.
After fleeing sometimes 2 or 3 times, some families ended up in UN refugee camps like Dheisheh, including AJ’s family. In 1948, the UN, believing the families would be allowed to return home, put each family in a tent. When 1000 people died from living in tents through a particularly cold winter in 1948, the UN decided to give each family a “house” – and I use the term loosely. These houses were 9 x 9 per family, with a public bathroom. I have posted pictures below. The first of the public bathroom, the second of 1/2 of the two-family structure.
Also, in December of 1948, the UN passed Resolution 194, which gives the Palestinians refugees the right to return or to compensation, like every other refugee population in the world. Of course, this has not happened. But as AJ asked us, isn’t it a basic human rights to live where you want? Hey, how about being allowed to live in your house, build on your land, travel to see family, travel to school, travel to work – what radical concepts.
Meanwhile, in contrast to the “terrorists” stereotypes, the Palestinians of Dheisheh Refugee Camp responded by starting a cultural center. It was planned by one man while he was in prison (most Palestinian men are imprisoned at one time or another in their life time, a topic discussed on day 1). Now, the cultural center includes many departments: dance, music, art, health, sports, a diabetes center, and a women’s center. Really, while I am busy being outraged, they are establishing cultural centers. And this brings me to Badil.
So Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & refugee Rights was established in 1998 to support the development of a popular refugee lobby for the right of return. Badil means “alternative.” The Badil representative explained to us that the conflict did not start in 1967 nor is it a territorial conflict about slashing a piece of land. Instead, it is about basic human rights, like the right to live. Right now, 2/3 of Palestinians are refugees. So, when speaking about a solution for the future, such a solution must include this population.
Now over and over again we have heard, from Palestinians and Israelis alike, that the peace “process” is merely a façade. One of the biggest complaints is that Oslo avoided the major issues, including the issues of the refugees’ right of return. In fact, out of 5000 pages, there is only one line regarding the refugees and that instructs the parties to deal with the issue later. The Badil representative told us that this means the cause of this disease was left in place to grow.
So, a group of activists started Badil to campaign on behalf of the people, starting with the refugee communities in and out of Palestine. Badil has grown in their projects but what I want to explain to you is that Badil does not care about what sovereignty is installed in this land. They are concerned with human rights. They are asking the world to look at the convention on human rights, refugee law, and UN Resolution 181.
Now, you might ask, why do the refugees simply settle permanently in the other Arab countries? Lets talk about what rights refugees have and what rights they do not have. The refugees appear to have three choices. They can return and be compensated; they can stay in the host country; or they can choose a third country in which to live. The problem is that the only legal right they have is pursuant to Resolution 181: to return and be compensated. Under international law, no other country besides Israel is bound to give them refuge.
But, the counter argument goes, all the Jewish people want is this one tiny piece of land. Why won’t the other Arab countries take “them?” Badil’s answer: Israel is very small but the Palestinians only have one home. You can buy or sell anything but you can not buy or sell a true home. In truth, just because I want something of yours certainly does not entitle me to take what is yours. Would any of us tolerate such violence?
But there is good news. You see, according to Badiul, 84% of Israeli Jews live on 16% of Israel proper. That means, there is an absolute possibility for people to return. But, you may ask, what about the Israeli communities that now stand on destroyed Arab villages? Don’t the Arabs want to destroy these? Badil says, and we heard this repeatedly, that the Palestinians believe that the Jews and the Arabs can live side by side. So Badil’s proposal is to build new housing communities for those refugees who want to return. Likewise, where there are Israeli institutions built on top of destroyed Palestinian villages, say, for example, Tel Aviv University, Badil has quite a creative and nonviolent solution: open the doors of Tel Aviv University to the descendants of the village that used to stand on this land to study for free.
Badil’s message? We should not care about institutions or sovereignties. Sovereignties have come and gone over this land for thousands of years. Empires have risen and empires have fallen. What we should be dedicating our energies to is to the people and their rights. To building a free place to live, not a militaristic and oppressive state. Are we ready?
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Some Pictures
So here are some pictures to bring some of the words of the last few days to life.
The first picture is of Yaffa, and shows the Ottoman-era governor's mansion at the city ceter. Notice the "Greek" columns to the left - those replace the half of the building that was destroyed by the Stern Gang terrorists.
The second picture is of the ancient city of Nablus. The third picture is again of Yaffa and the clock tower in the center of town. The fourth picture is a demolished house, well the ruins of same, in Um il Fahn. Finally, the fifth picture is of Tamer and his brother Suhell, 2/3 of Dam.
The first picture is of Yaffa, and shows the Ottoman-era governor's mansion at the city ceter. Notice the "Greek" columns to the left - those replace the half of the building that was destroyed by the Stern Gang terrorists.
The second picture is of the ancient city of Nablus. The third picture is again of Yaffa and the clock tower in the center of town. The fourth picture is a demolished house, well the ruins of same, in Um il Fahn. Finally, the fifth picture is of Tamer and his brother Suhell, 2/3 of Dam.
More on Permits, Recognition and Other Forms of Discrimination
Friday began with a tour of Lyd led by Tamer, one of the members of DAM, one of the Palestinian rap groups I discussed earlier. Lyd was another old Palestinian village in which the Israelis killed 100 people in the village’s mosque and then proceeded to close the mosque and kept it closed until approximately 10 years ago. At that time, it was reopened, but as a flea market.
To understand the atrocity of these events, I would invite you to substitute the word “synagogue” for the word “mosque” and substitute “Germans” for “Israelis.” So, the story would go “the Germans massacred 100 Jews in their own synagogue. Subsequently, and on the blood of those 100 Jews, the Germans opened a flea market.” Now before you get upset that I am analogizing the Israelis to the Nazis, please, breath and read on.
After a boycott led by the Palestinian Muslims [note the nonviolent action once again], the Israelis relented and reopened the mosque for religious purposes.
Other residents of the pre-1948 village of Lyd were part of the forced marches of evacuation. I have to warn you, members of our group repeated brought up the similarity between the Native American “experience” in North America and the Palestinians in Palestine.
Next, Tamer discussed the settlements. The settlements, Israel’s way of ensuring that a two-state solution cannot happen unless you consider spotted enclaves of Palestinian land interrupted by Jewish settlements a state, are a topic all on their own. These are government and army supported houses that typically take the nicest land, the water, are government-subsidized, receive all the services denied to many Palestinian villages (especially those that are “unrecognized,” a near-psychotic concept we will cover below) whose residents regularly attack the Palestinian whose land they confiscated. For a few testimonials, see Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) website at www.wclac.org/english/reports/un.pdf. These are scary people.
In Lyd, Tamer pointed out the brand new housing that constituted the settlement. He told us that if you look at a map of Lyd, it shows blanks where the Arab neighborhoods are, no street signs. The Jewish neighborhoods (not just the settlements) have, as I said, full services like electricity, for example, as well as gardens, parking and colors. Sometimes, when a Palestinian seeks to buy a house in the Jewish neighborhood, the Israelis stage a protest. The Arab neighborhood may go without water and electricity for days at a time and there is no trash collection. And typically, when the population of a village reaches 5-6000, the government is required to build a police station. So the Israelis did – by closing the library and using its facility.
Tamer then asked us to get out of the bus and drew a map in the dirt of the Arab neighborhood, to which all the Palestinians are confined. So how it works is that the Arab neighborhood is surrounded on one side by the infamous wall, on another side by a highway, on a third side by the neighborhood reserved for the Russian immigrants and on the fourth side by the high speed train tracks. How do the residents get in, you might ask? They must cross the high-speed train tracks. That is the sole entrance to the neighborhood to which the Palestinians are confined. 250 trains go by these tracks every day. Yes, many have died crossing the train tracks. And it is literally within feet of the neighborhood.
In contrast, the nearby Moshav, which is no where near the train tracks, complained about the noise of the train. They wanted the government to build a wall to muffle the sound. The Palestinians took them to court and won. But close to where the Moshav wanted the wall is a large house in which an entire extended family lives. The Israelis told the Palestinian community, lets make a deal. If you (a) don’t object to our building the acoustic wall, and (b) pay the fine for this family building this huge house without a permit, we won’t demolish the house. The community got together, raised the money, paid the fine and the “acoustic wall,” as it is known, was built. I will just let that story stand on its own.
Speaking of permits, or lack thereof, Tamer informed us that the Jewish population applies for and receives building, modification and repair permits. The Arab neighborhood, however, is not even on the map and is unrecognized by the Israeli government. Thus, THERE IS NO MUNICIPAL OFFICE TO WHICH THE PALESTINIAN POPULATION CAN APPLY FOR A PERMIT. Sigh. So, of course, as we discussed before, families grow, houses need modification and repair and so the Palestinians take care of their homes without permits. The Israeli government reaction? Issuing demolition orders. Most Palestinian homes in Lyd have standing demolition orders. Following a demolition, the Israeli government places giant boulders around the property border, preventing rebuilding.
Now, Tamer pointed out that it costs the Israeli government 500,000 shekels to demolish each house. To date, about 70 Palestinians homes in Lyd have been demolished. The cost of building a municipal office to house a building authority? 500,000 shekels. You do the math. Those of us listening and seeing were pretty convinced that the issue is not money but the Judaization of Lyd at the expense of those who were there way before the Jewish population, a repeat of 1948’s ethnic cleansing and a story we heard over and over again. Oh, by the way, Tamer organized a news conference of sorts, inviting 20-30 Israeli top stars to draw attention to the demolition process (note again, the utter commitment to nonviolent action). About a week before the tour, the police came and planted trees in the now empty land where a house was demolished.
Incidentally, Lyd is where many educated Palestinian are coming to settle: doctors, attorneys, etc. They refuse to leave because they believe the Israeli government’s goal is to get Palestinians out and confiscate even more land. Thus, this population refuses to cave and can afford to spend time beyond survival into activism and change.
And just to put icing on this cupcake, Tamer told us about the concept of “frozen land,” an Israeli term that identifies land on which no one is allowed to build until the government “unfreezes” it, i.e. until the government issues a permit. But one very wealthy Jewish “philanthropist” financed the building of a nice Russian, Jewish neighborhood on what was identified as frozen land. After ten years, the Israeli government, instead of knocking on doors and fining residents, instead of demolishing homes, issued a permit. Again, your honor, I rest my case. Lets move on, as we did, to Beersheba. Faisal Sawalha, of the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages, was kind enough to guide us on our tour. We were also kindly welcomed (and fed – we are always fed here!) by one of the Bedouin villages, who, along with Faisal, gave us the following information.
So Beersheba is approximately 100 years old and is a refreshing change in that while it is by far mostly Jewish, with 200,000 Jews and 5-6000 Arabs, Arabs and Jews live together and Arab children go to Jewish schools. But we will not get away that easily.
Before 1948, the Arab population lived in the old city. In1948, the Israeli government displaced them (soon, I will challenge you to get used to the term “ethnic cleansing”). Some fled to Gaza, some to the West Bank, some to Jordan and some to what are called “unrecognized villages.” I advise you to take a deep breath before we continue because this concept is just . . . unimaginable, creepy, outrageous but most of all, indicative of the continued ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.
Here is how it works. An unrecognized village is not placed on a map of Israel (remember, here we are inside the state of Israel, not in the Occupied Territories anymore). Some of these villages are ancestral land on which the people have lived forever. But some of these are places to which the government displaced the population in 1948. The government uses the villages’ unrecognized status as an excuse to withhold services, so these people have no electricity, no water, no kindergarten, no secondary schools, and no municipality at which to obtain permits, meaning that the population is always under the threat of demolition. (The nearby Jewish kibbutz, of course, has running water and even a cemetery.)
Now, just in case you missed it, note that some of these unrecognized villages are places to which the Israelis forced the Palestinians to in 1948. So, imagine this: you are forced to leave your ancestral land, the government displaces you onto another piece of land, and then labels you unrecognized and leaves you to survive without water and electricity. Oh, and by the way, there were electrical wires running all along the homes and schools of the unrecognized villages. Such an easy solution right in front of the government’s eyes. Does it not make you ponder on the reason for the treatment of the unrecognized villages? I will help you out.
These unrecognized villages are largely Bedouin. The Israelis cry that the Bedouins are taking over the land – they are invaders, and they are building homes without permits!!! There is so much wrong with that statement, I hardly know where to begin. First, the Bedouins lived on this land eons before the Israelis arrived, thus the question becomes “who is the invader;” but second, well we have discussed the permit issue. The Bedouin population in this area of Israel is 90,000 people. As Faisal suggested, perhaps if 90,000 people are without running water and live on this land, the problem is with the law and not the people? I don’t know – is that too radical a concept?
So in 1997, after years of demolitions and unrecognized status (have you gotten your arms around that one yet because I cannot), the community leaders gathered together to resolve via nonviolent actions. They formed the Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages, a/k/a RCUV. The RCUV pointed out to the Israeli government that under Israeli law, every 500 people forms a village. We have 45 villages of more than 500 each. Accordingly (under any logic I have ever heard), the Israeli government must recognize us and provide us services and treat us as the citizens that we are supposed to be. (As Faisal jokingly said, “I am an Israeli when I pay taxes, a Palestinian at a checkpoint.” I am constantly amazed at the Palestinians’ abilities to make such jokes. As for me, I spend half the time outraged and the other half in tears – in between enjoying the Palestinians’ inevitable hospitality.) The RCUV also did the government a favor and formulated its own development plans for the region. They hired a team of attorneys (that always means trouble) that take demolition cases to the Israeli High Court (the equivalent of the United States Supreme Court). They also try to empower the people to take action via, you guessed it by now, I hope, demonstrations. They also try to keep the media apprised. (Although I am sure you have not read about this in any US paper.) Incidentally, the RCUV brought a case to the High Court regarding the electrical wires that could easily be connected to the unrecognized villages homes and schools (what would be our reaction if our children were sitting in schools without electricity?). The High Court ruled in favor of the Bedouins. So the government bought generators.
Has the RCUV been successful? Well, to date, approximately 18 villages have been recognized. But the hook (there just always seems to be a hook) is that the Israeli government will only service part of each village, insisting that the Palestinians move to the other part. The Palestinians answer: a resounding “no.” Is there no end to this? Not yet.
Here’s the next hook (I have lost count of how many we have heard – and the trip is only half complete). During the Ottoman and Mandate (British) rule of Palestine, the Bedouins’ land was recognized as Bedouin land. The Bedouins are a traditional, but not nomadic, people. So there was no deed recorded in a municipal office. When the Israelis confiscated the land, they claimed this part of Palestine based on a concept of if you have no documents proving it, you do not own the land. (Compare and contrast: remember AM, the man on whose land we stood the other day, surrounded by JNF trees? His village had documentation of 480 people’s land ownership. It did them no good at all because the High Court recently ruled that the land as it stood today was too picturesque to return to the Palestinians.)
So back to the Bedouins. Here’s yet another hook or injustice or outrage, use your imagination to name this one. Notwithstanding the unrecognized status, notwithstanding the claim that because the Bedouins had no documentation proving ownership of the land, the Israeli government, to this day, makes it clear to the Bedouins that if they want to sell the land, the government will be happy to buy it.
Furthermore, the Israeli government established a commission last year to look at the Bedouin issue. They agreed that Bedouins were, in fact, not invaders. Before you get too excited, they also recommended that no villages receive recognition unless (are you sitting down?) the villages are consistent with the plans of the Israeli government. By the way, you may have heard about the Israeli government’s Negev Development Plan, which left the issue of the Bedouins to the National Security Council. The head of that council wrote that unrecognized Bedouin villages are an obstruction to the government’s plan and should be resolved like the government resolved the settlements of Gaza. (Remember? The ones that showed the IDF removing the Orthodox settlers from their beloved land?) The one difference, he said, was that the Gaza settlements were legal.
Oh and the Israeli government plans also include a request from the Israeli government that, in order to expand a nearby prison, they have expressed their desire for more Bedouin land. The land the government is requesting? It is the land to which the Bedouins were expelled in 1948 from their ancestral lands, to which they are not allowed to return (by this same Israeli government). Oh, and to be clear, these are Israeli citizens we are talking about here, citizens who pay taxes to this same government. I am exasperated and cannot help but agree with the Palestinians’ conclusion: the Israelis simply want the land, and will do anything to get it – period, end of story.
To understand the atrocity of these events, I would invite you to substitute the word “synagogue” for the word “mosque” and substitute “Germans” for “Israelis.” So, the story would go “the Germans massacred 100 Jews in their own synagogue. Subsequently, and on the blood of those 100 Jews, the Germans opened a flea market.” Now before you get upset that I am analogizing the Israelis to the Nazis, please, breath and read on.
After a boycott led by the Palestinian Muslims [note the nonviolent action once again], the Israelis relented and reopened the mosque for religious purposes.
Other residents of the pre-1948 village of Lyd were part of the forced marches of evacuation. I have to warn you, members of our group repeated brought up the similarity between the Native American “experience” in North America and the Palestinians in Palestine.
Next, Tamer discussed the settlements. The settlements, Israel’s way of ensuring that a two-state solution cannot happen unless you consider spotted enclaves of Palestinian land interrupted by Jewish settlements a state, are a topic all on their own. These are government and army supported houses that typically take the nicest land, the water, are government-subsidized, receive all the services denied to many Palestinian villages (especially those that are “unrecognized,” a near-psychotic concept we will cover below) whose residents regularly attack the Palestinian whose land they confiscated. For a few testimonials, see Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) website at www.wclac.org/english/reports/un.pdf. These are scary people.
In Lyd, Tamer pointed out the brand new housing that constituted the settlement. He told us that if you look at a map of Lyd, it shows blanks where the Arab neighborhoods are, no street signs. The Jewish neighborhoods (not just the settlements) have, as I said, full services like electricity, for example, as well as gardens, parking and colors. Sometimes, when a Palestinian seeks to buy a house in the Jewish neighborhood, the Israelis stage a protest. The Arab neighborhood may go without water and electricity for days at a time and there is no trash collection. And typically, when the population of a village reaches 5-6000, the government is required to build a police station. So the Israelis did – by closing the library and using its facility.
Tamer then asked us to get out of the bus and drew a map in the dirt of the Arab neighborhood, to which all the Palestinians are confined. So how it works is that the Arab neighborhood is surrounded on one side by the infamous wall, on another side by a highway, on a third side by the neighborhood reserved for the Russian immigrants and on the fourth side by the high speed train tracks. How do the residents get in, you might ask? They must cross the high-speed train tracks. That is the sole entrance to the neighborhood to which the Palestinians are confined. 250 trains go by these tracks every day. Yes, many have died crossing the train tracks. And it is literally within feet of the neighborhood.
In contrast, the nearby Moshav, which is no where near the train tracks, complained about the noise of the train. They wanted the government to build a wall to muffle the sound. The Palestinians took them to court and won. But close to where the Moshav wanted the wall is a large house in which an entire extended family lives. The Israelis told the Palestinian community, lets make a deal. If you (a) don’t object to our building the acoustic wall, and (b) pay the fine for this family building this huge house without a permit, we won’t demolish the house. The community got together, raised the money, paid the fine and the “acoustic wall,” as it is known, was built. I will just let that story stand on its own.
Speaking of permits, or lack thereof, Tamer informed us that the Jewish population applies for and receives building, modification and repair permits. The Arab neighborhood, however, is not even on the map and is unrecognized by the Israeli government. Thus, THERE IS NO MUNICIPAL OFFICE TO WHICH THE PALESTINIAN POPULATION CAN APPLY FOR A PERMIT. Sigh. So, of course, as we discussed before, families grow, houses need modification and repair and so the Palestinians take care of their homes without permits. The Israeli government reaction? Issuing demolition orders. Most Palestinian homes in Lyd have standing demolition orders. Following a demolition, the Israeli government places giant boulders around the property border, preventing rebuilding.
Now, Tamer pointed out that it costs the Israeli government 500,000 shekels to demolish each house. To date, about 70 Palestinians homes in Lyd have been demolished. The cost of building a municipal office to house a building authority? 500,000 shekels. You do the math. Those of us listening and seeing were pretty convinced that the issue is not money but the Judaization of Lyd at the expense of those who were there way before the Jewish population, a repeat of 1948’s ethnic cleansing and a story we heard over and over again. Oh, by the way, Tamer organized a news conference of sorts, inviting 20-30 Israeli top stars to draw attention to the demolition process (note again, the utter commitment to nonviolent action). About a week before the tour, the police came and planted trees in the now empty land where a house was demolished.
Incidentally, Lyd is where many educated Palestinian are coming to settle: doctors, attorneys, etc. They refuse to leave because they believe the Israeli government’s goal is to get Palestinians out and confiscate even more land. Thus, this population refuses to cave and can afford to spend time beyond survival into activism and change.
And just to put icing on this cupcake, Tamer told us about the concept of “frozen land,” an Israeli term that identifies land on which no one is allowed to build until the government “unfreezes” it, i.e. until the government issues a permit. But one very wealthy Jewish “philanthropist” financed the building of a nice Russian, Jewish neighborhood on what was identified as frozen land. After ten years, the Israeli government, instead of knocking on doors and fining residents, instead of demolishing homes, issued a permit. Again, your honor, I rest my case. Lets move on, as we did, to Beersheba. Faisal Sawalha, of the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages, was kind enough to guide us on our tour. We were also kindly welcomed (and fed – we are always fed here!) by one of the Bedouin villages, who, along with Faisal, gave us the following information.
So Beersheba is approximately 100 years old and is a refreshing change in that while it is by far mostly Jewish, with 200,000 Jews and 5-6000 Arabs, Arabs and Jews live together and Arab children go to Jewish schools. But we will not get away that easily.
Before 1948, the Arab population lived in the old city. In1948, the Israeli government displaced them (soon, I will challenge you to get used to the term “ethnic cleansing”). Some fled to Gaza, some to the West Bank, some to Jordan and some to what are called “unrecognized villages.” I advise you to take a deep breath before we continue because this concept is just . . . unimaginable, creepy, outrageous but most of all, indicative of the continued ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.
Here is how it works. An unrecognized village is not placed on a map of Israel (remember, here we are inside the state of Israel, not in the Occupied Territories anymore). Some of these villages are ancestral land on which the people have lived forever. But some of these are places to which the government displaced the population in 1948. The government uses the villages’ unrecognized status as an excuse to withhold services, so these people have no electricity, no water, no kindergarten, no secondary schools, and no municipality at which to obtain permits, meaning that the population is always under the threat of demolition. (The nearby Jewish kibbutz, of course, has running water and even a cemetery.)
Now, just in case you missed it, note that some of these unrecognized villages are places to which the Israelis forced the Palestinians to in 1948. So, imagine this: you are forced to leave your ancestral land, the government displaces you onto another piece of land, and then labels you unrecognized and leaves you to survive without water and electricity. Oh, and by the way, there were electrical wires running all along the homes and schools of the unrecognized villages. Such an easy solution right in front of the government’s eyes. Does it not make you ponder on the reason for the treatment of the unrecognized villages? I will help you out.
These unrecognized villages are largely Bedouin. The Israelis cry that the Bedouins are taking over the land – they are invaders, and they are building homes without permits!!! There is so much wrong with that statement, I hardly know where to begin. First, the Bedouins lived on this land eons before the Israelis arrived, thus the question becomes “who is the invader;” but second, well we have discussed the permit issue. The Bedouin population in this area of Israel is 90,000 people. As Faisal suggested, perhaps if 90,000 people are without running water and live on this land, the problem is with the law and not the people? I don’t know – is that too radical a concept?
So in 1997, after years of demolitions and unrecognized status (have you gotten your arms around that one yet because I cannot), the community leaders gathered together to resolve via nonviolent actions. They formed the Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages, a/k/a RCUV. The RCUV pointed out to the Israeli government that under Israeli law, every 500 people forms a village. We have 45 villages of more than 500 each. Accordingly (under any logic I have ever heard), the Israeli government must recognize us and provide us services and treat us as the citizens that we are supposed to be. (As Faisal jokingly said, “I am an Israeli when I pay taxes, a Palestinian at a checkpoint.” I am constantly amazed at the Palestinians’ abilities to make such jokes. As for me, I spend half the time outraged and the other half in tears – in between enjoying the Palestinians’ inevitable hospitality.) The RCUV also did the government a favor and formulated its own development plans for the region. They hired a team of attorneys (that always means trouble) that take demolition cases to the Israeli High Court (the equivalent of the United States Supreme Court). They also try to empower the people to take action via, you guessed it by now, I hope, demonstrations. They also try to keep the media apprised. (Although I am sure you have not read about this in any US paper.) Incidentally, the RCUV brought a case to the High Court regarding the electrical wires that could easily be connected to the unrecognized villages homes and schools (what would be our reaction if our children were sitting in schools without electricity?). The High Court ruled in favor of the Bedouins. So the government bought generators.
Has the RCUV been successful? Well, to date, approximately 18 villages have been recognized. But the hook (there just always seems to be a hook) is that the Israeli government will only service part of each village, insisting that the Palestinians move to the other part. The Palestinians answer: a resounding “no.” Is there no end to this? Not yet.
Here’s the next hook (I have lost count of how many we have heard – and the trip is only half complete). During the Ottoman and Mandate (British) rule of Palestine, the Bedouins’ land was recognized as Bedouin land. The Bedouins are a traditional, but not nomadic, people. So there was no deed recorded in a municipal office. When the Israelis confiscated the land, they claimed this part of Palestine based on a concept of if you have no documents proving it, you do not own the land. (Compare and contrast: remember AM, the man on whose land we stood the other day, surrounded by JNF trees? His village had documentation of 480 people’s land ownership. It did them no good at all because the High Court recently ruled that the land as it stood today was too picturesque to return to the Palestinians.)
So back to the Bedouins. Here’s yet another hook or injustice or outrage, use your imagination to name this one. Notwithstanding the unrecognized status, notwithstanding the claim that because the Bedouins had no documentation proving ownership of the land, the Israeli government, to this day, makes it clear to the Bedouins that if they want to sell the land, the government will be happy to buy it.
Furthermore, the Israeli government established a commission last year to look at the Bedouin issue. They agreed that Bedouins were, in fact, not invaders. Before you get too excited, they also recommended that no villages receive recognition unless (are you sitting down?) the villages are consistent with the plans of the Israeli government. By the way, you may have heard about the Israeli government’s Negev Development Plan, which left the issue of the Bedouins to the National Security Council. The head of that council wrote that unrecognized Bedouin villages are an obstruction to the government’s plan and should be resolved like the government resolved the settlements of Gaza. (Remember? The ones that showed the IDF removing the Orthodox settlers from their beloved land?) The one difference, he said, was that the Gaza settlements were legal.
Oh and the Israeli government plans also include a request from the Israeli government that, in order to expand a nearby prison, they have expressed their desire for more Bedouin land. The land the government is requesting? It is the land to which the Bedouins were expelled in 1948 from their ancestral lands, to which they are not allowed to return (by this same Israeli government). Oh, and to be clear, these are Israeli citizens we are talking about here, citizens who pay taxes to this same government. I am exasperated and cannot help but agree with the Palestinians’ conclusion: the Israelis simply want the land, and will do anything to get it – period, end of story.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Day 4: Yaffa, Resistance and an Intro to the Hardest Topic of All
We began this day with a walking tour of the old city of Yaffa with Sami, a master historian, activist and resident of Yaffa. To understand the devastation the Palestinian Yaffa residents have suffered, it is necessary to understand that history here started way before 1948. Located on a hill, in pre-1948 Palestine, Yaffa was the cultural center of Palestine consisting of fertile land and a seaport whose importance goes back to ancient times. Until the 1970's, the city's most important commodity was - you guessed it - oranges. (As Israel moved from an agricultural to an industrial state, it ceased the orange exportation and "gave" the Jaffa label to Spain. No more orange orchards exist in Yaffa.)
Beginning in the second half of the 19th century, the city began developing fast as a result of the economic success and demographic expansion. So they began building neighborhoods around the old city, to the north in what eventually became Tel Aviv and to the south, the Ajami neighborhood. At the center of the city was an Ottoman clock tower, a market, a mosque, a prison, a taxi station, in other words, a city center. The city also had a railroad line. The Palestinian population had free access to the entire Arab world. So, said Sami, his grandfather could take a taxi from Yaffa to Beirut, to Jordan, to Egypt. But in 1948, that all changed.
First, the Jewish terrorist group the Stern Gang, hiding a truck load of TNT in oranges, exploded the city center, destroying numerous shops, homes and other buildings. 26 children died in this explosion. The Stern Gang claimed that they did this because there were Palestinian terrorist groups hiding here. The story has not changed much, has it? Of the 120,000 pre-1948 Palestinian population, all but 3,900 were expelled from Yaffa. And these 3900 were penned into a ghetto surrounded by a fence, shtetl style, Ajami. And because the Arab countries were viewed as Israeli enemies, the 3900 remaining Yaffan Palestinians had no contact or knowledge of any family members that may have made it to Egypt or Syria or Saudi Arabia. Sami asked us to think about what it would have been like to go from being surrounded by extended family, neighbors and friends to being isolated and not know where family ended up. To go from having your neighborhood doctor, butcher, caterer, dressmaker, merchants to almost no one. This Sami called the second catastrophe. 1400 years of history was wiped out and Yaffa was "Judaized," as the early Zionist desired. Names of streets were changed to Hebrew names that translate to things like "Miracle to the Gentiles" and "Lover of Israel"(Sami asked us what we thought it would be like to be a Palestinian living on Menachim Begin street?). This the Palestinians call the "Nakbah," the "Catastrophe."
But there were two more catastrophes yet to come. The second was the "Present-Absence" law we discussed yesterday - where once the Palestinians were driven at gun point from their homes, the homes and property were deemed abandoned and confiscated by the state. The winter of 1948-49 was a cold one. And so the Yaffan Palestinians found themselves knocking on the doors of their own homes asking the new Jewish immigrants for blankets. Imagine, asked Sami, what this does to a person?
The third catastrophe was co-existence, the practice of bringing new Jewish immigrants not only into the Ajami ghetto but into the Palestinian homes in a strange form of communal living, sharing bathrooms, kitchens with those who may have just killed your brother, uncle, cousin in the many wars that followed.
Now, the Yaffan Palestinians are experiencing a fourth catastrophe: a housing crisis. We met with yet another activist at lunchtime who explained that of course the Ajami Palestinian residents do not own the homes in which they live, the state of Israel does. No changes, improvements or structural repairs are allowed without a state permit and hopefully by now you realize that such permits are not issued. So, al Palestinians who have "renovated," (read maintained) their homes are living illegally. Recently, the state has been coming to the population and demanding fines. Since, says the government, you renovated this house in say 1965, at the time you would have owed us 60,000 shekels, today that fine is 1,000,000. Another way to expel the Palestinian population from their own homes. The Palestinians have formed a committee to, nonviolently, fight this system, protect their homes.
Sami then introduced us to an 85 year old pharmacist who runs the same pharmacy run by his grandfather and father before him. I have videos of both Sami's story of 1948 and the devastating psychological effect on the Yaffan Palestinians and of this pharmacist (who asked me if I was going to be submitting the video to Playboy :)). He told us that most buildings were destroyed and that the Israelis did not want Arabs in Yaffa because the Arabs were savages who needed to be killed. Newspapers reported Mossad agents whose specialty was the murder of children. Rabbis announced that it was a mitzvah to kill Arabs (this is also reported by Israeli historians documenting the settlement movement).
Today, Palestinian children are forbidden to study their own history. Only the Zionist version of the history of the area is allowed. Sami himself was fired for teaching Palestinian history in a private high school. So, Sami pointed out, while the Palestinians of Yaffa were under military rule until 1966 (a form of oppression in and of itself), after 1966 it was the control of the educational system that controlled the Palestinian Yaffa population. (Now linguistics come into play here. We often here Palestinians living in Israel referred to as "Israeli Arabs." This is an incorrect term but if a Palestinian living in Israel refers to himself as a Palestinian, he is viewed as a bad citizen, not loyal or grateful to the state of Israel.)
At any rate, on the committee that controls Yaffa education sits a member of the Israeli security force, Shabak. This committee appoints all the schools' headmasters, which are, of course, political appointments. They also develop the curriculum and the textbooks. In a review of Arab textbooks used from first to fourth grades, Sami's group found 4000 mistakes in grammar and linguistics. Today, one of his projects is fighting for the Palestinians to be involved in curriculum development.
So, now you have a flavor for the history and suffering of a people. What, you are hopefully asking, is being done? Hopefully, you let in my not-so-subtle statements on the numerous nonviolent resistance in which the Palestinian community is engaged. But there are also Israeli Jews who are resisting. Let me tell you, for now, the story of two, to be continued tomorrow.
Shministim: the Shministim are a group of young people, around since the 1970's actually, who refuse to serve in the Israeli army specifically because to do so would be to become the oppressor. We met with Roz, a member of the 2008-09 Shministim. From a small village, she had never heard the word “occupation.” She describes herself as living in a bubble. When she was 15 years old, she went to a vegan, ecological summer camp where she was transformed. First, because there was the Shmnitism from 2005 there and, for the first time, she heard about refusal. You should understand that refusing is not really an option in Israel. You just always know you have to go. So by the time you are 15, you start thinking about the unit you want to be in. Her father wanted her to be in the same unit in which he served. Her feminism added to this, it was like an opportunity to be a female warrior.
Nonetheless, she began to talk to the 2005 class of refusniks where she first heard about the occupation. Although it bothered her that the refusniks were breaking the law, she understood that if Israel is violating the human rights of the Palestinians, then Israel cannot be a democracy. To keep the spirit of democracy, you must refuse to participate or the law is nothing more than an instrument of a fascist state. So, she took a tour of East Jerusalem, for the first time.
The guide she had told her that she was on a road only for Jews. This was new information for her. Again, how is this democracy? It looked to her like the most racist thing that could ever be. In addition, she saw a wall that clearly divided the land between the beautifully blue-skied Jewish side of Israel and the poverty stricken Palestinian side of the Occupied Territories. She felt that someone has been lying to her, hiding the reality from her.
Deeply emotionally affected, she told her guide she wanted to join a demonstration and joined a demonstration in Bil’in, a refugee camp known for its weekly NONVIOLENT demonstrations that are regularly tear-gassed by the IDF. This was R's first demonstration ever and it was at the demonstration that she heard about the land confiscation. At the demonstration, the Israeli soldiers formed a strong line to stop the demonstrators from going to the wall. The demonstrators sat down and the soldiers began to throw tear gas, beat the demonstrators and haul them away. She found this appalling because the demonstrators were simply people trying to make a statement in an allegedly democratic state.
After that, she went once a month to a demonstration at the various refugee camps, met regularly with the 2005 Shminitism group, and told her parents that maybe she would refuse. In 2009, when she reached the age of 18, she knew she would refuse. She formed a group with the other class of 2009 refusniks, knowing she would be imprisoned and determining how they wanted to refuse. In total, she was in prison for four months. The imprisonment was not continuous. Here is how it works. In Israel, you have to serve unless you are Orthodox, religious, mentally impaired, or a conscientious objectors, which was the reason she asked to be released from service. But pacifism is defined here such that you have to state that you would never respond nonviolently to any situation, even if, for example, “a terrorist raped your sister in the street” (the actual question they posed to her). It cannot simply be an ideology. In her ordeal, Roz faced ten officers, nine of them men, who verbally attacked her and tried to trick her, treating her as if she was a liar. They also asked her, for example, if she was getting raped and called the police, what about the fact that the police would "do the violence" for her? Also, she could not say anything political, like saying the word “occupation,” as that would have disqualified her for the conscientious objection category. So, she did not pass this committee.
The next step is that on her actual draft day, she refused to follow the draft order. The army treats these young people as soldiers violating an order and subjects them to a military trial. The sentence can be 7 – 35 days in prison, a random sentence that depends on the judge and/or the judge’s mood. Once you serve the sentence, the process starts all over again, going to the same base, refusing the draft order, and again being sentenced and imprisoned. In the end, she asked for the mental officer to whom she explained that after 4 months imprisonment, she was asking to be released on the basis of being mentally unfit to serve. She could not mention anything political. (The army often railroads the refusers into this category to avoid statistics on those refusing on political grounds). Roz also talked about having to stay on the base while waiting for a place in prison, the base on which, of course, everyone around her was a soldier. They called her “soldier” on the base. They gave her orders which, by the way, if she failed to follow, subjected her to additional prison time. (The orders were typically trivial, like an order not to sit on a certain bench). These young people are incredibly brave and face not only prison time but social and job discrimination in a militaristic state that values soldiers above all else.
But what of those who do serve? Meet Yonatan. I will tell you Yonatan's story first but I need to remember my request of you before I started - that when you read something particularly disturbing, you take a breath before you walk away. Y's story is intricately wound up in the BDS movement - the boycott, divestment and sanction movement against Israel. I know your reaction - just breath first and let Yonatan tell you his story and then tomorrow we can talk about BDS in greater detail.
Yonatan was a Zionist leftist who went into the army believing he was protecting his country, following his father's dreams. Yonatan was an air force pilot, a captain in a black hawk squandron. After realizing that he was not protecting his country and that none of the mythology that he had been told by the Zionist educational system was true, he formed the group of airforce pilots that led a refusal movement in 2003. These soldiers stated that they loved their country but they would not participate in attacks that harm innocent Palestinians. It led, of course, to Yonatan's disharge from air force. He then became active in the human rights movement in Israel to end the occupation.
A year and a half later, with refusnik organizations, Yonatan formed “Combatants for Peace.” Their mandate was that it was important to refuse but also you must correct the wrongdoing of which you were part. You must also meet Palestinians against whom you had been fighting who are also supporting the nonviolent struggle. Referencing Martin Luther King, Yonatan said that this was all in order to liberate the Palestinians from being oppressed and the Israelis from being oppressors.
When he started to explain his reason for refusing to internationals, he realized the need to put pressure on that community to put pressure on Israeli government and that it was ok to stand on a stage and call for action against the Israeli government. He first called for sanctions against his country shaking on a stage in London first, shaking.
Then he heard about the Palestinian call for BDS, a nonviolent action that he saw as a very natural ending point, or a place to reach in his path from being an obedient soldier to what he calls a peace activist and Boycott from Within activist. (Boycott from Within is the Israeli Jewish group that has endorsed the Palestinian call for BDS).
In the beginning, the group felt they were army people who had erred and who will will lead the charge for peace. Eventually, he understood that this is also a militaristic way of thinking that was unhelpful. Instead, he needed to put that urge to "lead the charge" aside and understand that he is a supporter of the Palestinian struggle. So now, this former Israeli air force pilot practices being a supporter by flying the Palestinian flag.
While nationalism is not his thing, he thinks it is crucial that the movement be led by the Palestinians and the Israelies be part of the struggle without deciding what methodology or path the struggle takes. Instead, the Israeli Jews must learn to follow the lead of those that you formerly oppressed.
Yonatan explains to people who disagree with Boycott from Within that the goal here is, for example, to stop the army raids in Bil’in, where the IDF is kidnapping teenagers, that the group seeks to stop the arrests of the Palestinian leaders of the nonviolent struggle (remember Jamal from our discussion the other day?). Most of all, he wants to stop the criminal bombardments on houses in Gaza and the killing of innocents, all of this without killing the soldiers, the prison guards, or the air force pilots. So, what he can do is support the most extreme but nonviolent form of struggle of the Palestinian people, the boycott, divestment and sactions movement against the state (not the people) of Israel.
I think that is enough for today. We heard more from Yonatan and Ronnie, another member of Boycott from Within, about the political aspects and goals of the group. But I will let you first absorb the stories you heard from Sami, Roz and Yonatan, breath, cry, rage before I ask you to come back to this painful table. Please, please, please, and please again know that these Israelis stressed to us that boycott of the Israeli government's actions is in no way anti-semitic. And as Americans, remember the post September 11th phenomenon of the conflation of being anti-Bush to being unpatriotic. You see? Israel is a country and the consequences of being a country are that it is bound by laws that demand human rights for all. As a country, then, it is subject to criticism and counter-actions when it violates those laws and the very principles of equality we hold so dear on which those laws are based.
Breath.
Beginning in the second half of the 19th century, the city began developing fast as a result of the economic success and demographic expansion. So they began building neighborhoods around the old city, to the north in what eventually became Tel Aviv and to the south, the Ajami neighborhood. At the center of the city was an Ottoman clock tower, a market, a mosque, a prison, a taxi station, in other words, a city center. The city also had a railroad line. The Palestinian population had free access to the entire Arab world. So, said Sami, his grandfather could take a taxi from Yaffa to Beirut, to Jordan, to Egypt. But in 1948, that all changed.
First, the Jewish terrorist group the Stern Gang, hiding a truck load of TNT in oranges, exploded the city center, destroying numerous shops, homes and other buildings. 26 children died in this explosion. The Stern Gang claimed that they did this because there were Palestinian terrorist groups hiding here. The story has not changed much, has it? Of the 120,000 pre-1948 Palestinian population, all but 3,900 were expelled from Yaffa. And these 3900 were penned into a ghetto surrounded by a fence, shtetl style, Ajami. And because the Arab countries were viewed as Israeli enemies, the 3900 remaining Yaffan Palestinians had no contact or knowledge of any family members that may have made it to Egypt or Syria or Saudi Arabia. Sami asked us to think about what it would have been like to go from being surrounded by extended family, neighbors and friends to being isolated and not know where family ended up. To go from having your neighborhood doctor, butcher, caterer, dressmaker, merchants to almost no one. This Sami called the second catastrophe. 1400 years of history was wiped out and Yaffa was "Judaized," as the early Zionist desired. Names of streets were changed to Hebrew names that translate to things like "Miracle to the Gentiles" and "Lover of Israel"(Sami asked us what we thought it would be like to be a Palestinian living on Menachim Begin street?). This the Palestinians call the "Nakbah," the "Catastrophe."
But there were two more catastrophes yet to come. The second was the "Present-Absence" law we discussed yesterday - where once the Palestinians were driven at gun point from their homes, the homes and property were deemed abandoned and confiscated by the state. The winter of 1948-49 was a cold one. And so the Yaffan Palestinians found themselves knocking on the doors of their own homes asking the new Jewish immigrants for blankets. Imagine, asked Sami, what this does to a person?
The third catastrophe was co-existence, the practice of bringing new Jewish immigrants not only into the Ajami ghetto but into the Palestinian homes in a strange form of communal living, sharing bathrooms, kitchens with those who may have just killed your brother, uncle, cousin in the many wars that followed.
Now, the Yaffan Palestinians are experiencing a fourth catastrophe: a housing crisis. We met with yet another activist at lunchtime who explained that of course the Ajami Palestinian residents do not own the homes in which they live, the state of Israel does. No changes, improvements or structural repairs are allowed without a state permit and hopefully by now you realize that such permits are not issued. So, al Palestinians who have "renovated," (read maintained) their homes are living illegally. Recently, the state has been coming to the population and demanding fines. Since, says the government, you renovated this house in say 1965, at the time you would have owed us 60,000 shekels, today that fine is 1,000,000. Another way to expel the Palestinian population from their own homes. The Palestinians have formed a committee to, nonviolently, fight this system, protect their homes.
Sami then introduced us to an 85 year old pharmacist who runs the same pharmacy run by his grandfather and father before him. I have videos of both Sami's story of 1948 and the devastating psychological effect on the Yaffan Palestinians and of this pharmacist (who asked me if I was going to be submitting the video to Playboy :)). He told us that most buildings were destroyed and that the Israelis did not want Arabs in Yaffa because the Arabs were savages who needed to be killed. Newspapers reported Mossad agents whose specialty was the murder of children. Rabbis announced that it was a mitzvah to kill Arabs (this is also reported by Israeli historians documenting the settlement movement).
Today, Palestinian children are forbidden to study their own history. Only the Zionist version of the history of the area is allowed. Sami himself was fired for teaching Palestinian history in a private high school. So, Sami pointed out, while the Palestinians of Yaffa were under military rule until 1966 (a form of oppression in and of itself), after 1966 it was the control of the educational system that controlled the Palestinian Yaffa population. (Now linguistics come into play here. We often here Palestinians living in Israel referred to as "Israeli Arabs." This is an incorrect term but if a Palestinian living in Israel refers to himself as a Palestinian, he is viewed as a bad citizen, not loyal or grateful to the state of Israel.)
At any rate, on the committee that controls Yaffa education sits a member of the Israeli security force, Shabak. This committee appoints all the schools' headmasters, which are, of course, political appointments. They also develop the curriculum and the textbooks. In a review of Arab textbooks used from first to fourth grades, Sami's group found 4000 mistakes in grammar and linguistics. Today, one of his projects is fighting for the Palestinians to be involved in curriculum development.
So, now you have a flavor for the history and suffering of a people. What, you are hopefully asking, is being done? Hopefully, you let in my not-so-subtle statements on the numerous nonviolent resistance in which the Palestinian community is engaged. But there are also Israeli Jews who are resisting. Let me tell you, for now, the story of two, to be continued tomorrow.
Shministim: the Shministim are a group of young people, around since the 1970's actually, who refuse to serve in the Israeli army specifically because to do so would be to become the oppressor. We met with Roz, a member of the 2008-09 Shministim. From a small village, she had never heard the word “occupation.” She describes herself as living in a bubble. When she was 15 years old, she went to a vegan, ecological summer camp where she was transformed. First, because there was the Shmnitism from 2005 there and, for the first time, she heard about refusal. You should understand that refusing is not really an option in Israel. You just always know you have to go. So by the time you are 15, you start thinking about the unit you want to be in. Her father wanted her to be in the same unit in which he served. Her feminism added to this, it was like an opportunity to be a female warrior.
Nonetheless, she began to talk to the 2005 class of refusniks where she first heard about the occupation. Although it bothered her that the refusniks were breaking the law, she understood that if Israel is violating the human rights of the Palestinians, then Israel cannot be a democracy. To keep the spirit of democracy, you must refuse to participate or the law is nothing more than an instrument of a fascist state. So, she took a tour of East Jerusalem, for the first time.
The guide she had told her that she was on a road only for Jews. This was new information for her. Again, how is this democracy? It looked to her like the most racist thing that could ever be. In addition, she saw a wall that clearly divided the land between the beautifully blue-skied Jewish side of Israel and the poverty stricken Palestinian side of the Occupied Territories. She felt that someone has been lying to her, hiding the reality from her.
Deeply emotionally affected, she told her guide she wanted to join a demonstration and joined a demonstration in Bil’in, a refugee camp known for its weekly NONVIOLENT demonstrations that are regularly tear-gassed by the IDF. This was R's first demonstration ever and it was at the demonstration that she heard about the land confiscation. At the demonstration, the Israeli soldiers formed a strong line to stop the demonstrators from going to the wall. The demonstrators sat down and the soldiers began to throw tear gas, beat the demonstrators and haul them away. She found this appalling because the demonstrators were simply people trying to make a statement in an allegedly democratic state.
After that, she went once a month to a demonstration at the various refugee camps, met regularly with the 2005 Shminitism group, and told her parents that maybe she would refuse. In 2009, when she reached the age of 18, she knew she would refuse. She formed a group with the other class of 2009 refusniks, knowing she would be imprisoned and determining how they wanted to refuse. In total, she was in prison for four months. The imprisonment was not continuous. Here is how it works. In Israel, you have to serve unless you are Orthodox, religious, mentally impaired, or a conscientious objectors, which was the reason she asked to be released from service. But pacifism is defined here such that you have to state that you would never respond nonviolently to any situation, even if, for example, “a terrorist raped your sister in the street” (the actual question they posed to her). It cannot simply be an ideology. In her ordeal, Roz faced ten officers, nine of them men, who verbally attacked her and tried to trick her, treating her as if she was a liar. They also asked her, for example, if she was getting raped and called the police, what about the fact that the police would "do the violence" for her? Also, she could not say anything political, like saying the word “occupation,” as that would have disqualified her for the conscientious objection category. So, she did not pass this committee.
The next step is that on her actual draft day, she refused to follow the draft order. The army treats these young people as soldiers violating an order and subjects them to a military trial. The sentence can be 7 – 35 days in prison, a random sentence that depends on the judge and/or the judge’s mood. Once you serve the sentence, the process starts all over again, going to the same base, refusing the draft order, and again being sentenced and imprisoned. In the end, she asked for the mental officer to whom she explained that after 4 months imprisonment, she was asking to be released on the basis of being mentally unfit to serve. She could not mention anything political. (The army often railroads the refusers into this category to avoid statistics on those refusing on political grounds). Roz also talked about having to stay on the base while waiting for a place in prison, the base on which, of course, everyone around her was a soldier. They called her “soldier” on the base. They gave her orders which, by the way, if she failed to follow, subjected her to additional prison time. (The orders were typically trivial, like an order not to sit on a certain bench). These young people are incredibly brave and face not only prison time but social and job discrimination in a militaristic state that values soldiers above all else.
But what of those who do serve? Meet Yonatan. I will tell you Yonatan's story first but I need to remember my request of you before I started - that when you read something particularly disturbing, you take a breath before you walk away. Y's story is intricately wound up in the BDS movement - the boycott, divestment and sanction movement against Israel. I know your reaction - just breath first and let Yonatan tell you his story and then tomorrow we can talk about BDS in greater detail.
Yonatan was a Zionist leftist who went into the army believing he was protecting his country, following his father's dreams. Yonatan was an air force pilot, a captain in a black hawk squandron. After realizing that he was not protecting his country and that none of the mythology that he had been told by the Zionist educational system was true, he formed the group of airforce pilots that led a refusal movement in 2003. These soldiers stated that they loved their country but they would not participate in attacks that harm innocent Palestinians. It led, of course, to Yonatan's disharge from air force. He then became active in the human rights movement in Israel to end the occupation.
A year and a half later, with refusnik organizations, Yonatan formed “Combatants for Peace.” Their mandate was that it was important to refuse but also you must correct the wrongdoing of which you were part. You must also meet Palestinians against whom you had been fighting who are also supporting the nonviolent struggle. Referencing Martin Luther King, Yonatan said that this was all in order to liberate the Palestinians from being oppressed and the Israelis from being oppressors.
When he started to explain his reason for refusing to internationals, he realized the need to put pressure on that community to put pressure on Israeli government and that it was ok to stand on a stage and call for action against the Israeli government. He first called for sanctions against his country shaking on a stage in London first, shaking.
Then he heard about the Palestinian call for BDS, a nonviolent action that he saw as a very natural ending point, or a place to reach in his path from being an obedient soldier to what he calls a peace activist and Boycott from Within activist. (Boycott from Within is the Israeli Jewish group that has endorsed the Palestinian call for BDS).
In the beginning, the group felt they were army people who had erred and who will will lead the charge for peace. Eventually, he understood that this is also a militaristic way of thinking that was unhelpful. Instead, he needed to put that urge to "lead the charge" aside and understand that he is a supporter of the Palestinian struggle. So now, this former Israeli air force pilot practices being a supporter by flying the Palestinian flag.
While nationalism is not his thing, he thinks it is crucial that the movement be led by the Palestinians and the Israelies be part of the struggle without deciding what methodology or path the struggle takes. Instead, the Israeli Jews must learn to follow the lead of those that you formerly oppressed.
Yonatan explains to people who disagree with Boycott from Within that the goal here is, for example, to stop the army raids in Bil’in, where the IDF is kidnapping teenagers, that the group seeks to stop the arrests of the Palestinian leaders of the nonviolent struggle (remember Jamal from our discussion the other day?). Most of all, he wants to stop the criminal bombardments on houses in Gaza and the killing of innocents, all of this without killing the soldiers, the prison guards, or the air force pilots. So, what he can do is support the most extreme but nonviolent form of struggle of the Palestinian people, the boycott, divestment and sactions movement against the state (not the people) of Israel.
I think that is enough for today. We heard more from Yonatan and Ronnie, another member of Boycott from Within, about the political aspects and goals of the group. But I will let you first absorb the stories you heard from Sami, Roz and Yonatan, breath, cry, rage before I ask you to come back to this painful table. Please, please, please, and please again know that these Israelis stressed to us that boycott of the Israeli government's actions is in no way anti-semitic. And as Americans, remember the post September 11th phenomenon of the conflation of being anti-Bush to being unpatriotic. You see? Israel is a country and the consequences of being a country are that it is bound by laws that demand human rights for all. As a country, then, it is subject to criticism and counter-actions when it violates those laws and the very principles of equality we hold so dear on which those laws are based.
Breath.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Day 3: I give up on trying to think of clever titles
So I will try to describe today to you while my darling husband tries to figure out how to upload the flip video that was supposed to be today's blog. Sidebar: the Flip takes fantastic videos that load fine to my laptops but I will be damned if I can figure out how to upload them here.
Anyway, today we went to Um il Fahm, a now-city that has absorbed internally displaced Palestinians from, among other places, Al-Lajjun village (which is just a few miles down the road from Um il Fahm). We met with a villager (whom you will see, hopefully, on the video) who I will call AM. AM was only 7 in 1949 when the Israelis entered the village and confiscated his family's land. The Israeli government has never allowed the villagers to return home. In fact, within two years, their entire village was destroyed. This after Israel had entered into an agreement with Jordan pursuant to which the Israelis had specifcially agreed NOT to confiscate land or enter villages using guns or violence.
Immediately, the Israelis implemented military rule on the entire town of Um il Fahm, which lasted from 1949 to 1965. This military rule included a curfiew from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. during which time the villagers could not leave their homes and thus could not work. After many years of NONVIOLENT activism, the Palestinians convinced the army to lift the military rule.
But it was not until 1972 that the town had electricity. The Israeli government consistently put obstacles in their way but AM stressed that they developed the town via repeated nonviolent resistance. Still, unemployment for the descendants of this rich and self-sufficient village stands at over 25% today. Nor are the villagers free from oppression. Here is how it works. Israel refuses to grant Palestinians building permits. But Palestinians, like the rest of us, need homes or have homes that need improvements, maintenance, and repair. Or need schools, or hospitals, or libraries or well the list goes on and on. So, knowing the risk, the Palestinians build/improve and then the Israeli government issues a demolition order. Most families live like this for years, knowing that at any time, their houses and buildings could be demolished. (House demolitions are also used, in violation of international law, as a way of collectively punishing a family when one member is accused or detained [but not tried or found guilty] of a security violation. For more on house demolitions, see Jeff Halper's "An Israeli in Palestine" or his website, http://icahd.org/eng/. Jeff's is one of my favorite books). Since 2000, 11 houses in Um il Fahm have been demolished.
But back to AM's village. He took us to his land where he and one of the village elders described pre-1948 village life. The people owned livestock, plows, combines and had irrigation systems (no, it was not the Jews that made the desert bloom - this was a fertile land.) They had wells and grist mills powered hydrolically. They had a doctor and a nurse, 2 mosques, a cemetary, a market, a bus station and a life where all the villagers attended weddings and funerals collectively. And they have documentation of the 480 people that owned land here. Interestingly enough, in this case, likely because of the activism, the State of Israel has offered the people financial compensation for their land. But the villagers refused the government's offer. Why? THEY WANT TO GO HOME. The villagers hired lawyers (that's dangerous) and took their case to court. Despite concrete evidence of land ownership, however, they have lost the case in the Israeli courts. Unwilling to give up, AM reports that they are planning to take their case to the International Court of Justice and the United Nations. If we read that either of those two bodies rules against the State of Israel, I think we can now all agree such a ruling will not be an act of anti-semitism.
I should tell you that AM told us this story while we were standing on his land, where his home used to be. The village was one of the richest villages. All around us, instead of houses and schools, farms and livestock, were JNF trees. To this day, the villagers cannot go home. I have an amazing video of AM - if we cannot get it loaded and you want to see it, please email me and I will forward.
Meantime, we also today visited Ein Hod. So Ein Hod has the distinction of being a village in the Haifa region whose residents were expelled in 1948 but whose village was not destroyed. Standing today are beautiful buildings, occupied now by a "progressive" Israeli artists' colony. In 1948, when forced to flea, the residents fled up the hill and rebuilt their lives in a village they named also Ein Hod. Here's this trick, though. First, once the residents "left" their hones, the "Present-Absent Law" took effect, meaning that if for one month you are not present in your home, it is considered abandoned and the state confiscates it. Second, for years, the state of Israel would not recognize the village. There are numerous unrecognized villages in Israel. This means, for Ein Hod, that when the villagers re-established themselves after having been expelled from their homes, the state refused to provide then with services, like, oh, say water, electricity, sewage services, health, education you know, minor things. Our co-leader told us the story of how, when leading a group of Palestinian teenagers on a Birthright Re-Plugged trip, where the children, because they are not yet 16, can go and visit their land, one young girl called her grandfather on the phone from Ein Hod, her village. He told her how to find the family home. She did, knocked on the door, introduced herself and was told by the current "resident" (squatter?) that she was welcome to visit anytime. How generous.
AnywAy, I should not sign off without tell you that in response to their "unrecognized" status, some of the Palestinians organized into the Association of Forty and fought long and hard for recognition. We ate at the restaurant owned by one of the Palestinian activists and then watched a documentary on the unrecognized villages. I will say one thing for the Israelis - they are frighteningly good at devising mechanisms through which they can "claim" the land.
Anyway, today we went to Um il Fahm, a now-city that has absorbed internally displaced Palestinians from, among other places, Al-Lajjun village (which is just a few miles down the road from Um il Fahm). We met with a villager (whom you will see, hopefully, on the video) who I will call AM. AM was only 7 in 1949 when the Israelis entered the village and confiscated his family's land. The Israeli government has never allowed the villagers to return home. In fact, within two years, their entire village was destroyed. This after Israel had entered into an agreement with Jordan pursuant to which the Israelis had specifcially agreed NOT to confiscate land or enter villages using guns or violence.
Immediately, the Israelis implemented military rule on the entire town of Um il Fahm, which lasted from 1949 to 1965. This military rule included a curfiew from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. during which time the villagers could not leave their homes and thus could not work. After many years of NONVIOLENT activism, the Palestinians convinced the army to lift the military rule.
But it was not until 1972 that the town had electricity. The Israeli government consistently put obstacles in their way but AM stressed that they developed the town via repeated nonviolent resistance. Still, unemployment for the descendants of this rich and self-sufficient village stands at over 25% today. Nor are the villagers free from oppression. Here is how it works. Israel refuses to grant Palestinians building permits. But Palestinians, like the rest of us, need homes or have homes that need improvements, maintenance, and repair. Or need schools, or hospitals, or libraries or well the list goes on and on. So, knowing the risk, the Palestinians build/improve and then the Israeli government issues a demolition order. Most families live like this for years, knowing that at any time, their houses and buildings could be demolished. (House demolitions are also used, in violation of international law, as a way of collectively punishing a family when one member is accused or detained [but not tried or found guilty] of a security violation. For more on house demolitions, see Jeff Halper's "An Israeli in Palestine" or his website, http://icahd.org/eng/. Jeff's is one of my favorite books). Since 2000, 11 houses in Um il Fahm have been demolished.
But back to AM's village. He took us to his land where he and one of the village elders described pre-1948 village life. The people owned livestock, plows, combines and had irrigation systems (no, it was not the Jews that made the desert bloom - this was a fertile land.) They had wells and grist mills powered hydrolically. They had a doctor and a nurse, 2 mosques, a cemetary, a market, a bus station and a life where all the villagers attended weddings and funerals collectively. And they have documentation of the 480 people that owned land here. Interestingly enough, in this case, likely because of the activism, the State of Israel has offered the people financial compensation for their land. But the villagers refused the government's offer. Why? THEY WANT TO GO HOME. The villagers hired lawyers (that's dangerous) and took their case to court. Despite concrete evidence of land ownership, however, they have lost the case in the Israeli courts. Unwilling to give up, AM reports that they are planning to take their case to the International Court of Justice and the United Nations. If we read that either of those two bodies rules against the State of Israel, I think we can now all agree such a ruling will not be an act of anti-semitism.
I should tell you that AM told us this story while we were standing on his land, where his home used to be. The village was one of the richest villages. All around us, instead of houses and schools, farms and livestock, were JNF trees. To this day, the villagers cannot go home. I have an amazing video of AM - if we cannot get it loaded and you want to see it, please email me and I will forward.
Meantime, we also today visited Ein Hod. So Ein Hod has the distinction of being a village in the Haifa region whose residents were expelled in 1948 but whose village was not destroyed. Standing today are beautiful buildings, occupied now by a "progressive" Israeli artists' colony. In 1948, when forced to flea, the residents fled up the hill and rebuilt their lives in a village they named also Ein Hod. Here's this trick, though. First, once the residents "left" their hones, the "Present-Absent Law" took effect, meaning that if for one month you are not present in your home, it is considered abandoned and the state confiscates it. Second, for years, the state of Israel would not recognize the village. There are numerous unrecognized villages in Israel. This means, for Ein Hod, that when the villagers re-established themselves after having been expelled from their homes, the state refused to provide then with services, like, oh, say water, electricity, sewage services, health, education you know, minor things. Our co-leader told us the story of how, when leading a group of Palestinian teenagers on a Birthright Re-Plugged trip, where the children, because they are not yet 16, can go and visit their land, one young girl called her grandfather on the phone from Ein Hod, her village. He told her how to find the family home. She did, knocked on the door, introduced herself and was told by the current "resident" (squatter?) that she was welcome to visit anytime. How generous.
AnywAy, I should not sign off without tell you that in response to their "unrecognized" status, some of the Palestinians organized into the Association of Forty and fought long and hard for recognition. We ate at the restaurant owned by one of the Palestinian activists and then watched a documentary on the unrecognized villages. I will say one thing for the Israelis - they are frighteningly good at devising mechanisms through which they can "claim" the land.
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