Monday, June 15, 2009
Friday, December 19, 2008
Facts on the Ground (Draft of talk given on Dec. 18th)
One of the phrases often used in connection with negotiations is “facts on the ground,” referring to the Israeli settlements on the West Bank which will remain part of Israel in any negotiation. This sounds fairly abstract, but when you’re on the “ground” of a Palestinian olive grove, for example, and the “fact” of a settlement takes up most of a hill above, spread out like a large, wealthy suburb, the phrase “facts on the ground” takes on a more vivid meaning. A few of the basic “facts” of the Occupation involve conflicts over land ownership, control of access and hegemony over historical and religious sites, and control of resources. Each of the experiences I’m going to share illustrates one of those issues.
My first “fact on the ground” is related to land ownership. Since the 1967 war, Israel has seized more than 40% of West Bank land, redefining it as “state land.” Settlements of various sizes – ranging from outposts with a few trailers to communities of several thousand, have been put up on this land: the settler population in the West Bank now numbers more than 450,000. Determining land ownership involves dealing with a Byzantine morass of legal and quasi-legal documents, precedents and regulations.
What does this mean for Palestinians? Here’s one example, an incident in the day of a Palestinian farmer which for us, the American visitors, was a major event but for him, something that might happen as often as several times a month. We Americans had come, all 40 of us, to the village of Karyut to plant olive trees on the land of Walid, a Palestinian farmer whose trees have been damaged or uprooted by the settlers whose presence, in the large hilltop settlement of Shiloh, now dominates the area. We are not exactly in the village: the olive grove is situated right off of the main road. At the other end of the field, the dirt road that leads to Walid’s village winds up a hill to the right. Getting off the bus, we see an army truck parked near that road, and a few soldiers are having an animated conversation with Walid and some other Palestinian men whom, I assume, are relatives or just fellow villagers. The road is blocked by a huge mound of dirt. Our guide, Rabbi Arik Ascherman from Rabbis for Human Rights, goes over and finds out that army had apparently bulldozed the mound of dirt to block access to the road, for “security.” The previous day, the farmers had bulldozed a path through the mound, and the army had returned to bulldoze it back again. Since the mound was large but hardly impassible – any one of my grandchildren could have climbed over it with only a little difficulty – “security” did not seem like very valid reason. What the mound really blocked was not human, but vehicle access from the village to the field: stuck behind the mound was the truck used to bring water to the olive grove. This mound meant that not only water, but any equipment used for farming, could not be brought in. (The settlers, by the way, have their water piped in.)
Nothing could be done about this, but as we planted the olive trees we’d brought, another army truck arrived, accompanied by a settler wearing a kippah and carrying a large gun slung over his shoulder. He had arrived to inform us that we shouldn’t be there: the land, he said, belonged to Moshe. Arik argued with him: Who is Moshe? Where is Moshe? In Tel Aviv. What proof do you have that he owns this land? Where are the documents of ownership? They’re in Tel Aviv, with Moshe. The soldiers, looking bored, smoked cigarettes and glanced off into space. The settler continued arguing but finally left.
This was only a minor skirmish in what are endless battles for the Palestinians to legitimize their claim to land that often, their ancestors have lived on for generations. Settlers claim the right to expropriate the land for a variety of reasons, and Palestinians often have no recourse but to go to court –a lengthy and expensive proposition. Rabbis for Human Rights has a lawyer working part time who does nothing but handle these court cases: they have won several, but the farmers have often lost access to their fields for the period of time the cases are pending, and even when they have regained legal access to their land, continued harassment by the settlers makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to farm. Clearly the settlers in Shiloh do not need Walid’s small plot of land for their agricultural purposes; but if they are to fulfill their vision of Judea and Samaria for the Jews, and only Jews, each fraction of land owned by a Palestinian becomes fair game in this battle.
Another “fact on the ground:” hegemony over history and religion. A battle is being waged in Hebron about this, and it’s also a battle of revenge. Brief background: in the 7th century, Arabs who had conquered Hebron from the Romans allowed the Jews living there to build a synagogue near Abraham’s burial site. Abraham is also revered in Islam as the ancestor of Muhammad. Jews and Arabs apparently lived together without conflict for centuries, until in 1917 Hebron, after 400 years of Ottoman rule, was occupied by the British. In 1929, the Arabs, upset with the increase of Jewish migration to Palestine, attacked Hebron’s Jews, killing 67 men, women and children. Some Jews were protected and saved by Arab families with whom they’d been friends, but in any case all Jews fled the city after that. In the 1967 Hebron was captured by Israel and became part of the occupied territories. In 1968, a small group of fundamentalist Jews, considered extremist even by Israeli standards, moved into a hotel there and refused to leave, claiming they wanted to avenge the 1929 massacre and re-establish a Jewish presence in Hebron. The then Defense-minister Moshe Dayan allowed them to resettle on a military base in Hebron, which subsequently became the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba. Later a small group of Jews from the same extremist sect settled in the center of the city. Most of Hebron was placed under the control of the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo Accords, but the city’s center, where these Jews had taken up residence, remains under Israeli military control. Hebron’s modern history has been one of killing and more killing, on both sides. In 1980 a Palestinian attack killed 6 Jews; in 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American Jew living in Kiryat Arba, shot 29 Palestinians as they prayed at the mosque over Abraham’s tomb. Currently, about 4000 border police, civil police and Israeli soldiers are stationed in the center of Hebron to protect the 600 Jewish residents. They are not there, however, to protect the Palestinians who are daily humiliated, abased, and oppressed by both the settlers’ treatment of them and the severe restrictions placed on them by their military occupiers. The Palestinian population of the center of Hebron, once numbering about 12,000, has dwindled to about 5,000.
Most recently, a group of the extremist settlers moved into a building they claimed to have bought from a Palestinian. The seller, however, insisted that once he realized he was making a sale to settlers, he’d withdrawn the offer and the sale had never taken place. The Israel Supreme Court issued an order that the settlers must evacuate, pending resolution of the dispute. They refused, and when the IDF arrived to remove them forcibly, they (and their equally fanatic supporters who had come into the town) responded violently, injuring soldiers, shooting at Palestinians, and attempting to burn down the home of a Palestinian family trapped inside. We were there a week or so before that series of events occurred, but the hostility, tension and undercurrents of violence were palpable even then. Escorted -- or rather, herded along -- by a phalanx of both civil and border police, we were permitted to walk through the market place but rarely allowed to stop for long; policemen with cameras were stationed all along our route, photographing us every inch of the way. We were also joined by a Hebron settler, who was kept on the sidelines by the police but followed us screaming “Terrorists, murderers, you have blood on your hands,” for most of our walk.
Our guide for this tour was Michael Manekin, a religious young Israeli who had served his army tour of duty in Hebron and, with some other soldiers, formed the group Breaking the Silence as a consequence of his experiences there. This group collects the testimonies of soldiers who have served in the Occupied Territories and have had to follow very questionable orders that involved abuse and humiliation of Palestinian citizens, destruction of property, and so forth. What we saw as we walked was a desolate, deserted Palestinian market place with boarded-up stalls covered with graffiti, courtesy of the settlers, that said things like “Death to the Arabs.” The Star of David was scrawled on some of the locked doorways. Most distressing were the apartments above the stalls: the windows which looked out on the street were literally caged in by iron gates, a necessity for the Palestinian families who live there to protect themselves against the garbage, feces and stones thrown at them by the settlers from the hillside above. A face peered out from one caged window; in another, some plants were placed on the sill – both poignant sights. The street we were walking on was considered “sterile” – the Israeli designation for it – which means that Palestinians are not allowed to walk there. To leave their homes they must go out a back window and down a fire escape, to a street they have permission to be on. At the end of our “tour” of the market, we found ourselves in the square of the Tomb of the Patriarchs; as tourists, we were entitled to enter the enclosure and see Abraham’s burial place. But suddenly the captain of our police escort decided that we were not tourists: we were a demonstration, and as such could not congregate anywhere. In spite of protests, we were told to board our bus immediately and leave. I knew now how Palestinians must feel all the time – it’s like living in the midst of a Kafka novel.
Hebron was, for many of us, the worst and most depressing experience. But it’s not the only place where the battle for hegemony over religious sites is being fought. In Silwan, a Palestinian village in East Jerusalem which was thought to be the dwelling place of King David, an archeological dig of considerable interest is taking place. An extremist group called El Ad, which has no archeological credentials, has been granted rights by the Israeli government to manage the site. What they are doing in Silwan is roundly condemned by archeologists throughout the world: they are using the dig politically to justify the destruction of the Palestinians’ homes and the Judaization of the village. As we stood next to a home in Silwan that had been demolished by the Israeli Defense Forces, Rabbi Arik pointed out to us the village houses on the steep hillside that had been taken over by El Ad members: these homes had Israeli flags flying from their rooftops, and little guard houses where private guards with guns could “protect” the owners. The El Ad people use a variety of ruses to purchase homes from the Silwan Palestinians: they pay Egyptian or Jordanian Arabs to serve as intermediaries, for example, so that a Palestinian seller does not know he’s selling his home to Jews. And by this time, some Palestinians find life so intolerable there that they are anxious to get out anyhow.
Lastly – a brief anecdote about control of resources. It’s fairly widely known that Israel controls 95% of the water resources from both within the Green Line and in the West Bank; much of this comes from aquifers in Palestinian territory expropriated by the Israelis, who sell the water back to the Palestinians at double the price that Israelis pay for it. But a lesser known consequence of control of resources was explained to us by a Palestinian-American businessman, Sam Bahour, who had emigrated to Palestine after the Oslo Accords, hoping to establish a business in Bethlehem. Sam’s field is telecommunications and, as he told us, the Oslo Accords made explicit the right of Palestinians to establish and own companies providing telephone, internet and television service. But, Sam continued, although this right is on the front page of the section on communication in the Oslo Accords, the next page says that Israel maintains control of the airwaves. So when Sam attempted to start his business, he could only get permission from the Israeli government to access a very narrow bandwidth, which was not wide enough to accommodate his planned communication services. He pointed out that Israel’s control of the airwaves, water rights, airspace, roadways, land use regulations, etc., make it impossible for people like himself – middle class, entrepreneurial, and eager to form economic ties with Israel – to make a decent living. And of course the “reading of the second page” of each section of the Oslo Accords makes it clear that the Accords were heavily front-loaded in favor of Israel.
Discouraging as this is, there is a ray of hope in the groups like Rabbis for Human Rights, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and Machsom Watch, which work day and night to mitigate some of the worst facets of the Occupation, and whose presence in both Palestinian areas of Israel and in the West Bank put a human face on Israel – letting Palestinians, whose only encounters with Israelis are ordinarily with soldiers, police and settlers – see that there are other kinds of Jews – who care about justice and human rights.
My first “fact on the ground” is related to land ownership. Since the 1967 war, Israel has seized more than 40% of West Bank land, redefining it as “state land.” Settlements of various sizes – ranging from outposts with a few trailers to communities of several thousand, have been put up on this land: the settler population in the West Bank now numbers more than 450,000. Determining land ownership involves dealing with a Byzantine morass of legal and quasi-legal documents, precedents and regulations.
What does this mean for Palestinians? Here’s one example, an incident in the day of a Palestinian farmer which for us, the American visitors, was a major event but for him, something that might happen as often as several times a month. We Americans had come, all 40 of us, to the village of Karyut to plant olive trees on the land of Walid, a Palestinian farmer whose trees have been damaged or uprooted by the settlers whose presence, in the large hilltop settlement of Shiloh, now dominates the area. We are not exactly in the village: the olive grove is situated right off of the main road. At the other end of the field, the dirt road that leads to Walid’s village winds up a hill to the right. Getting off the bus, we see an army truck parked near that road, and a few soldiers are having an animated conversation with Walid and some other Palestinian men whom, I assume, are relatives or just fellow villagers. The road is blocked by a huge mound of dirt. Our guide, Rabbi Arik Ascherman from Rabbis for Human Rights, goes over and finds out that army had apparently bulldozed the mound of dirt to block access to the road, for “security.” The previous day, the farmers had bulldozed a path through the mound, and the army had returned to bulldoze it back again. Since the mound was large but hardly impassible – any one of my grandchildren could have climbed over it with only a little difficulty – “security” did not seem like very valid reason. What the mound really blocked was not human, but vehicle access from the village to the field: stuck behind the mound was the truck used to bring water to the olive grove. This mound meant that not only water, but any equipment used for farming, could not be brought in. (The settlers, by the way, have their water piped in.)
Nothing could be done about this, but as we planted the olive trees we’d brought, another army truck arrived, accompanied by a settler wearing a kippah and carrying a large gun slung over his shoulder. He had arrived to inform us that we shouldn’t be there: the land, he said, belonged to Moshe. Arik argued with him: Who is Moshe? Where is Moshe? In Tel Aviv. What proof do you have that he owns this land? Where are the documents of ownership? They’re in Tel Aviv, with Moshe. The soldiers, looking bored, smoked cigarettes and glanced off into space. The settler continued arguing but finally left.
This was only a minor skirmish in what are endless battles for the Palestinians to legitimize their claim to land that often, their ancestors have lived on for generations. Settlers claim the right to expropriate the land for a variety of reasons, and Palestinians often have no recourse but to go to court –a lengthy and expensive proposition. Rabbis for Human Rights has a lawyer working part time who does nothing but handle these court cases: they have won several, but the farmers have often lost access to their fields for the period of time the cases are pending, and even when they have regained legal access to their land, continued harassment by the settlers makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to farm. Clearly the settlers in Shiloh do not need Walid’s small plot of land for their agricultural purposes; but if they are to fulfill their vision of Judea and Samaria for the Jews, and only Jews, each fraction of land owned by a Palestinian becomes fair game in this battle.
Another “fact on the ground:” hegemony over history and religion. A battle is being waged in Hebron about this, and it’s also a battle of revenge. Brief background: in the 7th century, Arabs who had conquered Hebron from the Romans allowed the Jews living there to build a synagogue near Abraham’s burial site. Abraham is also revered in Islam as the ancestor of Muhammad. Jews and Arabs apparently lived together without conflict for centuries, until in 1917 Hebron, after 400 years of Ottoman rule, was occupied by the British. In 1929, the Arabs, upset with the increase of Jewish migration to Palestine, attacked Hebron’s Jews, killing 67 men, women and children. Some Jews were protected and saved by Arab families with whom they’d been friends, but in any case all Jews fled the city after that. In the 1967 Hebron was captured by Israel and became part of the occupied territories. In 1968, a small group of fundamentalist Jews, considered extremist even by Israeli standards, moved into a hotel there and refused to leave, claiming they wanted to avenge the 1929 massacre and re-establish a Jewish presence in Hebron. The then Defense-minister Moshe Dayan allowed them to resettle on a military base in Hebron, which subsequently became the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba. Later a small group of Jews from the same extremist sect settled in the center of the city. Most of Hebron was placed under the control of the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo Accords, but the city’s center, where these Jews had taken up residence, remains under Israeli military control. Hebron’s modern history has been one of killing and more killing, on both sides. In 1980 a Palestinian attack killed 6 Jews; in 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American Jew living in Kiryat Arba, shot 29 Palestinians as they prayed at the mosque over Abraham’s tomb. Currently, about 4000 border police, civil police and Israeli soldiers are stationed in the center of Hebron to protect the 600 Jewish residents. They are not there, however, to protect the Palestinians who are daily humiliated, abased, and oppressed by both the settlers’ treatment of them and the severe restrictions placed on them by their military occupiers. The Palestinian population of the center of Hebron, once numbering about 12,000, has dwindled to about 5,000.
Most recently, a group of the extremist settlers moved into a building they claimed to have bought from a Palestinian. The seller, however, insisted that once he realized he was making a sale to settlers, he’d withdrawn the offer and the sale had never taken place. The Israel Supreme Court issued an order that the settlers must evacuate, pending resolution of the dispute. They refused, and when the IDF arrived to remove them forcibly, they (and their equally fanatic supporters who had come into the town) responded violently, injuring soldiers, shooting at Palestinians, and attempting to burn down the home of a Palestinian family trapped inside. We were there a week or so before that series of events occurred, but the hostility, tension and undercurrents of violence were palpable even then. Escorted -- or rather, herded along -- by a phalanx of both civil and border police, we were permitted to walk through the market place but rarely allowed to stop for long; policemen with cameras were stationed all along our route, photographing us every inch of the way. We were also joined by a Hebron settler, who was kept on the sidelines by the police but followed us screaming “Terrorists, murderers, you have blood on your hands,” for most of our walk.
Our guide for this tour was Michael Manekin, a religious young Israeli who had served his army tour of duty in Hebron and, with some other soldiers, formed the group Breaking the Silence as a consequence of his experiences there. This group collects the testimonies of soldiers who have served in the Occupied Territories and have had to follow very questionable orders that involved abuse and humiliation of Palestinian citizens, destruction of property, and so forth. What we saw as we walked was a desolate, deserted Palestinian market place with boarded-up stalls covered with graffiti, courtesy of the settlers, that said things like “Death to the Arabs.” The Star of David was scrawled on some of the locked doorways. Most distressing were the apartments above the stalls: the windows which looked out on the street were literally caged in by iron gates, a necessity for the Palestinian families who live there to protect themselves against the garbage, feces and stones thrown at them by the settlers from the hillside above. A face peered out from one caged window; in another, some plants were placed on the sill – both poignant sights. The street we were walking on was considered “sterile” – the Israeli designation for it – which means that Palestinians are not allowed to walk there. To leave their homes they must go out a back window and down a fire escape, to a street they have permission to be on. At the end of our “tour” of the market, we found ourselves in the square of the Tomb of the Patriarchs; as tourists, we were entitled to enter the enclosure and see Abraham’s burial place. But suddenly the captain of our police escort decided that we were not tourists: we were a demonstration, and as such could not congregate anywhere. In spite of protests, we were told to board our bus immediately and leave. I knew now how Palestinians must feel all the time – it’s like living in the midst of a Kafka novel.
Hebron was, for many of us, the worst and most depressing experience. But it’s not the only place where the battle for hegemony over religious sites is being fought. In Silwan, a Palestinian village in East Jerusalem which was thought to be the dwelling place of King David, an archeological dig of considerable interest is taking place. An extremist group called El Ad, which has no archeological credentials, has been granted rights by the Israeli government to manage the site. What they are doing in Silwan is roundly condemned by archeologists throughout the world: they are using the dig politically to justify the destruction of the Palestinians’ homes and the Judaization of the village. As we stood next to a home in Silwan that had been demolished by the Israeli Defense Forces, Rabbi Arik pointed out to us the village houses on the steep hillside that had been taken over by El Ad members: these homes had Israeli flags flying from their rooftops, and little guard houses where private guards with guns could “protect” the owners. The El Ad people use a variety of ruses to purchase homes from the Silwan Palestinians: they pay Egyptian or Jordanian Arabs to serve as intermediaries, for example, so that a Palestinian seller does not know he’s selling his home to Jews. And by this time, some Palestinians find life so intolerable there that they are anxious to get out anyhow.
Lastly – a brief anecdote about control of resources. It’s fairly widely known that Israel controls 95% of the water resources from both within the Green Line and in the West Bank; much of this comes from aquifers in Palestinian territory expropriated by the Israelis, who sell the water back to the Palestinians at double the price that Israelis pay for it. But a lesser known consequence of control of resources was explained to us by a Palestinian-American businessman, Sam Bahour, who had emigrated to Palestine after the Oslo Accords, hoping to establish a business in Bethlehem. Sam’s field is telecommunications and, as he told us, the Oslo Accords made explicit the right of Palestinians to establish and own companies providing telephone, internet and television service. But, Sam continued, although this right is on the front page of the section on communication in the Oslo Accords, the next page says that Israel maintains control of the airwaves. So when Sam attempted to start his business, he could only get permission from the Israeli government to access a very narrow bandwidth, which was not wide enough to accommodate his planned communication services. He pointed out that Israel’s control of the airwaves, water rights, airspace, roadways, land use regulations, etc., make it impossible for people like himself – middle class, entrepreneurial, and eager to form economic ties with Israel – to make a decent living. And of course the “reading of the second page” of each section of the Oslo Accords makes it clear that the Accords were heavily front-loaded in favor of Israel.
Discouraging as this is, there is a ray of hope in the groups like Rabbis for Human Rights, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and Machsom Watch, which work day and night to mitigate some of the worst facets of the Occupation, and whose presence in both Palestinian areas of Israel and in the West Bank put a human face on Israel – letting Palestinians, whose only encounters with Israelis are ordinarily with soldiers, police and settlers – see that there are other kinds of Jews – who care about justice and human rights.
Monday, December 8, 2008
INSPIRATIONS
I’ll cut to the quick. Last week I returned from an incredible 2-week adventure. I traveled with Rabbis for Human Rights-North America (RHR-NA) through the West Bank and Israel seeing their works and the works of other Israeli Human Rights groups. Last year I had given up my work for an Israeli-Palestinian peace out of frustration, disappointment and anger. My despair was so deep that I had moved away from Judaism and my community. I was ready to sever the tie.
I saw ‘Rabbis for Human Rights’ choosing to look directly at the abuses of human rights in Israel and the West Back. Choosing to look and choosing to speak out! And choosing to work to repair the broken world!! I met many people who chose to say loudly what they knew in their hearts. I met many people willing to put their lives and livelihoods on the line.
I have been inspired by Rabbis for Human Rights. My commitment has been rekindled. What right do I have to sit in the comfort and safety of my home in Austin and whine? Over the last few years it has become crystal clear to me that in order to save Israel as the Jewish, democratic state that I love we need to end the occupation and create a just and viable two state solution. I will return home and renew that work.
Please go to the website of Rabbis for Human Rights- North America www.hr-na.org and click on the Israel Trip tab to read all about our trip. And if you to are inspired please make a donation. I believe that they are working to save Israel and to save Judaism.
Below are some of my thoughts about our trip. They are random and often skip the background one might need to understand. They are largely unedited. They are long. If they arrived in my in box no matter how much I cared I wouldn’t find time to read them.
So; above is the pitch, below are some of my thoughts and on the website you’ll find the best description of this amazing trip and the opportunity to donate to Rabbis For Human Rights North America.
11-09-2008; ON THE PLANE TO ISRAEL
I turned 60 this year and so did Israel. Emily, Sam and I had planned to celebrate both birthdays this past summer in Israel visiting with Ben. (He’s studying at Hebrew University) Those plans didn’t materialize for many reasons. Emily did get to go and had a wonderful visit with Ben and his friends in Jerusalem. Sam visited last winter.
Now it’s my turn. I’m writing this on the flight to Tel Aviv. I will be joining Rabbis for Human Rights – North America on a ten-day mission to Israel and the West Bank. The mission is part of RHR-NA yearlong Pursuit of Justice Campaign marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel and the 20th anniversary of the founding of Rabbis for Human Rights. We will be visiting with the leaders and members of Rabbis for Human Rights and other Israeli human rights groups like Betzelem, the Israeli Human Rights organizations; Machsom Watch, women who witness the treatment of Palestinians at checkpoints, Shovrim Shtika, soldiers who break the silence about human rights abuses, and many others.
This will be my fifth visit. The first was in 1969 when I did my junior year in Jerusalem at the Hebrew University. I lived for a half a year in an Arab village on the West Bank and half the time in Jewish West Jerusalem. That shaped me in many ways. More on that later. The second time was with Emily on our honeymoon in 1984. The third was for a celebration of my Dad’s 80th birthday in 2005. And the 4th was with Ben, Sam and Emily in 2006.
This visit has two purposes. The first is to celebrate our 60th birthdays. (Mine and Israel’s) and second to explore the bond I have with Israel and to examine the bond I have with Judaism and Jews.
I began working for peace between Israel and Palestine almost a decade ago. For five years early in this decade I worked actively with as small group of concerned Jews trying to explain to the Austin Jewish community what we believed the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank was doing to the Israelis, the Palestinians and to Judaism. Over the past few years I have become disheartened. With each new counterproductive action or statement by the Palestinians, or Israelis, or the American Jewish community or by the Bush administration I have become more disillusioned. As the silence from the Jewish community becomes louder and louder my alienation deepens and my faith lessens.
This trip is as much serendipity as planned. Other commitments over the summer caused us to drop plans for a family visit then an e-mail announcement of this trip from Rabbis for Human Rights put the idea in my head. Emily, lovingly, gently nudged me onto the plane. And here I am a few hours from Tel Aviv wondering; Will I learn anything new? Will my spiritual connection to Israel and Jerusalem be strengthened or will it be severed?
11-13-2008
This is the third day of the trip and I had intended to write an E-mail daily. It ain’t gonna happen. Instead I’m going to outline most of our trip and record only my personal highlights and thoughts. Others who write much better and more quickly are keeping a blog of our trip at www.rhr-na.org (click on Israel trip). Check it out!
DAY ONE; MEET THE GROUP
When I go out in Austin I’m very often the oldest person there. There are 38 folks signed up for this trip. I guess at 60 I’m right in the middle. Two American Rabbis and a writing professor are leading the group. There’s also a tour guide and a money person/ administrator. The group is about ¾ Jewish and ¼ Christian. Exclusive of the leaders there are about 6 or 7 American congregational Rabbis (Reform, Renewal, Reconstructionist etc). There is probably the almost the same number of Christian Clergy.
DAY TWO; PLANTING OLIVE TREES and DANNY RUBENSTIEN
I’m not fond of planting trees for symbolism. Whenever I’m asked to do so I try to avoid it. Planting these olive trees on the West Bank is symbolic also. They probably won’t survive. We planted the trees on Palestinian fields in a valley below Israeli settlements. The settlers will probably uproot the trees soon. If not I don’t think they will survive anyway. The fields are about a ¼ of a mile from the Palestinian village but a mound of dirt placed there by the military authority blocks the road. There’s a water truck ready to water the trees but it can’t get past the roadblock.
Today we watched a small battle for the land play out as we planted. Much of the activity on the West Bank is just that; a struggle by the settlers to claim the land and a struggle by the Palestinians to claim it back. In truth that’s the nut of the conflict. Land. Borders.
The battle for the land is played out on many scales;
1.The occupation by civilians in territories captured in war is illegal as defined in the Fourth Geneva Convention. The entire world, except for Israel, sees the Israeli settlements as illegal. Today Israel has around 500,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
2. To begin or expand a settlement settlers illegally (often even by Israeli law) occupy a hilltop and set up a trailer or armed encampment. Various Government agencies wink and nod and provide services and legitimacy
3. Settlers steal neighboring lands in a multitude of ways.
Today, As we planted Rabbi Arik Asherman of Rabbis For Human Rights(RHR) interceded again and again on behalf of the Palestinian farmers as the Israeli military authority and the Israeli police sided with the settlers in this little battle. Another battle Rabbis for Human Rights is waging on this land is the legal battle to regain lands stolen from the settlers. Their main weapon is a dynamic young Palestinian lawyer. She is an Israeli Christian from Nazareth and she has been successful in winning back hundreds of dunhams of land illegally expropriated. RHR told us that they were optimistic that they can win back many more dunhams. For many of the expropriations the Palestinians had no lawyer, especially one that understood the language of the proceedings: Hebrew. Many Palestinian villagers gave up their lands out of fear. With more funding for more lawyers RHR is confident that they can win back thousands more.
These battles at first seemed irrelevant to me given that this orchard and these settlements are deep within the West Bank far away from most of the settlement blocks which are closer to the green line. If there is a settlement surely these settlements will be returned and the lands will revert back to Palestinian ownership. I can’t conceive of a solution that does not return most of the West Bank to the Palestinians.
These little battles are about returning livelihoods to the indigenous farmers. But I believe it takes almost 10 years for new olive trees to bear fruit. Olives are the mainstay of the economy. Many of the olive orchards have been expropriated, hacked down or burned by the army or the settlers. The Palestinian are prevented from harvesting much of the remaining by settler violence, army and settler harassment, by roadblocks and by the wall which often separates Palestinians from their lands.
These battles may slow down of the huge settlement project. They also bring Palestinians and Israelis together in battling the human rights violations of the occupation. Maybe they are laying the groundwork for some day in the future when the two peoples will live peacefully as neighbors. Most Palestinians have never seen a helpful Israeli. They’ve only seen Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers.
(For a bigger picture of how the lands upon which the settlements are built have been expropriated see the Israeli government’s own Sassoon Report; http://www.peacenow.org/hot.asp?cid=368
Again go to www.rhr-na.org (click on Israel trip) to see and learn more about what we saw.
After dinner we meet with Danny Rubenstein. Of all people he is most responsible for my being on this trip. About 8 years ago someone forwarded me an article from Ha’aretz (a liberal Israeli newspaper available on line in English www.haaretz.com). It was about what was happening on the West Bank. It shook me. Since that day I had faithfully followed Ha’aretz’ reporting from the West Bank (often Rubenstein) and their reporting on the peace process, the second intifada and life and politics in Israel.
I was particularly receptive to that initial article because I had lived on the West Bank in 1968-1969 when it was a beautiful and, from my perspective, a peaceful place. (More in another E-mail)
Danny has recently retired from Ha’aretz but I hadn’t known because over the past year I have given up the peace work. I have grown weary of banging my head against the wall. Over the last year I rarely read Ha’aretz.
I had been told by an associate Rabbi (since moved on) at my Reform Congregation that the Social Action committee’s work presenting a four-week Union For Reform Judaism sponsored ‘Teach In On the conflict’ was dismissed by the congregation as a “chuck” thing. Read; left wing, kooky, irrelevant. And that more importantly he told me that the leadership of the Reform movement and the Religious Action Center were out of touch with Jews in the pews. I had been told by a “machor”, a leader of our congregation’s “Project Transformation” for inclusively, that our work for a two-state solution and our involvement in the Interreligious Campaign against Torture was too “political” and that it was driving large contributors out of the congregation. I’m afraid that the desire for inclusivity, for an “open tent” has kept Judaism silent on the critical issue of today. How does Israel survive and prosper as a Jewish democratic state?
DAY THREE; ETHIOPIAN OBSORPTION CENTER, BEDOUIN COMMUNITY AND SDEROTH.
Three long and fascinating stories Again; www.RHR-NA.org
We sat in Sderoth with our host and hostess in their garden looking at Gaza a few miles away. These folks have lived for years with the threat of Qassam rockets falling, sometimes by the dozens, daily. We sat in their lovely garden and heard gunfire from a battle at the border. This is not a settlement in occupied territories. This is a kibbutz originally founded for new immigrants in the early 1950’s as an absorption center. These qassams along with thousands of years of oppression, the Holocaust, The Hebron massacre of 1929, The Arab invasion of 1948, The six day war of 1967, The Yom Kippur War, Munich, The Achille Lauro, The depraved bombings of the second intifada… all explain the fear and the mistrust which justify a wall and a dehumanized image of the other. How do two peoples get over the fear and distrust of each other which is almost genetic?
DAY FOUR, Morning; Hebron
I knew about Hebron. I was there in 1968. The same year the settler movement was born here. In 1995 Baruch Goldstein began a new and horrible cycle of violence by massacring 29 Palestinians as they prayed in a Mosque at the tomb of the Patriarchs. There is a memorial to him in Hebron today.
I’ve been reading Israeli newspapers for years and staying informed. I didn’t think anything would surprise me. I was prepared for settler violence. I was prepared to see settlers occupying and controlling the population. But I wasn’t prepared to see the absolute control of the police and the military over the Palestinians. I wasn’t prepared for Hebron. Picture this; the street we stand on is a ‘sterile’ street. A ‘sterile’ street means no Palestinians may walk on it. Their front doors and shops open onto the street but they can’t walk on it. Their front doors are locked by the police from the outside and their windows are caged (for their protection)
On one caged balcony the caged children stare out at the excitement; our ‘sightseeing’ group of about 50 (including around 10 Rabbis) is surrounded – for our protection- by at least an equal number of policemen. The excitement is a confrontation. We are being harassed by the police for our protection. They won’t let us buy from the local shop owners. They won’t let us see the holy site, the Tomb of the Patriarchs. They threaten us with arrest. They say we are an ‘unauthorized demonstration’ and are subject to arrest. They tell, Mikkhael Manekin, our tour leader that he is forever forbidden from praying at the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Mikkhael is an orthodox Jew; he is also a founder of ‘Breaking the Silence’. http://www.shovrimshtika.org/
On another caged balcony pigeons coo. There is a Star of David painted on a sealed door below. How do they get out of their cages? I saw a video not long ago that showed a Palestinian woman climbing a ladder up through her roof to access the area behind her house. Rabbi Walt told me that since then they have knocked more comfortable holes in the back walls. The road is closed to Palestinians. So they must carry their groceries in and their dead out like this. It can take 24 hours to get an ambulance. When women are eight months pregnant they move out of their houses to have access to a clinic. Don’t worry. The next block is only partially ‘sterile’. There is a division on it and the Palestinians get to walk on a quarter of it.
The shouk and the bustling commercial center that I remember form 1968 and 1984 is empty except for the police, the military and a few settlers who are screaming curses at us. Deserted. A ghost town. Why?
Because this section of Hebron is occupied by 600 settlers and 200 Yeshiva students. The policy of separation is the only way to control the violence coming from both directions. ‘Breaking the Silence’ is a group of soldiers who have courageously decided to talk about their experiences and their roles in the occupation. The authorities have decided that they don’t want breaking the silence to break the silence. Silence is good for occupation.
Jimmy carter was vilified by Jews for using the A word. But what we saw today is clearly Apartheid. Apartheid in Afrikaans means separation. In Hebrew the word ‘Hafrada’ means separation.
The Wall (http://www.btselem.org/English/Separation_Barrier/) is usually referred to by the Israeli press as the ‘hafrada’ or the ‘separation’ barrier. Its intention is to separate Israelis and Palestinians. (Also to provide security for Israelis and to unilaterally define the border of a future Palestinian state.) I’m sure the definition of apartheid is different from person to person; what we saw today was clearly separation based on race and ethnicity. We can’t use the A word because it shuts down the Jewish mind, closes the Jewish eye. . You have to learn more about Hebron. You are not going to believe it. I saw it and I can’t!!
DAY FIVE; BACK TO JERUSALEM FOR SHABBAT
We arrive back ‘home’ in the early afternoon in time to join Jerusalem preparing for Shabbat. We head to Machane Yehuda, the giant Israeli outdoor market in central Western Jerusalem. As Shabbat approaches the City is busy, festive, and buoyant. It buzzes with excitement and expectation. Near the old city you hear the muezzins call to prayer for Friday afternoon prayers reminding us that Jerusalem is a mixed city.
The debate on whether Jerusalem should be ‘divided or undivided’ speaks to us on many levels of history, of memories, of hopes and of fears. My prayer… Prayer? How does one pray without a belief in an acting, caring god? But ‘fervent hope’ doesn’t express the depth of my prayer. My prayer is to see Jerusalem as a symbol of hope; an undivided city where all faiths live in peace and friendship. A city where both Israelis and Palestinians have their capitols and where all faiths live together. This trip has shown us countless examples where the faiths are working together to restore human rights to the lands we love.
Thirty percent of annexed Jerusalem is non-Jewish, mostly Muslim Palestinians. It is the policy of the government to keep the city 65% Jewish. This official policy is the guideline for the unofficial policies of the municipality. -More later)
Machane Yehuda was very different when we celebrated my Dad’s 80th birthday in 2004. That was still during the Second Intifada. On of the most gruesome, horrible bombing happened on a Friday afternoon just like this. On this visit I walked past that corner of many times going to and from our Hotel in Bakka and the Ha ir mercahsite (Central West Jerusalem) or ir ha’atiqa (the old city). A few days after I left in 2004 there was a murderous bus blast here. It was near the apartment in which my parents still lived. Those days of bombing brought a dismal death to the spirit of Jerusalem. Most people didn’t go out unless they had to. They avoided public places. It’s very different today. The city is alive. The streets are teeming. The nightclubs are overflowing. The cafes are bustling. Different; For Israelis anyway.
Security improved with the wall (more later) and more importantly it improved as movement was stifled on the West Bank. Palestinians can’t go from town to town without spending numerous hours at endless checkpoints. Without the violence most Israeli’s have pushed ‘The Situation’ to the edges of their consciousness. For most Palestinians the daily suffering and humiliation is never out of their minds.
Ben and I and his friend Matt celebrated Shabbat at Congregation Kol Ha’nashima in Jerusalem. The synagogue was full. Israelis.Americans. Other nationalities. Young and old. And lots of Rabbis. The service was vibrant, all in Hebrew and most of it sung to beautiful tunes. Kol Ha’nashima’s Rabbi is Levi Kelman. He didn’t give a sermon but he preached earlier in the week with his feet and his eyes as he toured Hebron with us. That commitment is easily the greatest, most inspiring sermon I’ve ever heard.
I realized earlier in the trip that the most inspirational part of this trip was my traveling companions. They were willing to see the ugly side of Israel and still allowed themselves to be moved and inspired by the countless examples of heroism and Tikkun Olam that we were seeing daily. By far the most inspiring was he presence of the seven American Rabbis who had the courage to join us on this trip. The thing I’ve found most disturbing over the past years is the unwillingness of our American Jewish leadership, lay and clerical, to look. I’m certain that each of these Rabbis has been fundamentally changed by this trip. Their situations are different and how they go forward will be as individual as it will be difficult. However they go forward they are a great inspiration.
DAY SIX; SHABBAT
It was a very different kind of Shabbat. This was the first of two trips this week back to Al Azzariayyeh (Bethany). I lived there for more than a half a year in 1968. That was my first trip to Israel. I went to take my junior year at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I lived in the dormitories at Kiryat Ha Yovel in Jewish West Jerusalem and for seven months in the Palestinian West Bank town of Al Azzariayyeh, the biblical Bethany. With my cousin Carl I traveled to nearly every corner of the State and learned to love the land, the people. We sat on my veranda in Azzariyyeh overlooking the Judean hills. In those days Azzariayyeh was just 30 minutes from the Tachana mercazite- the central bus station -of West Jerusalem- But the West Bank was worlds apart. The West bank and East Jerusalem had been ruled by Jordan until the 6-day war the previous year. The Palestinians seemed to be looking forward to a better life than they had under Jordanian rule. Many Palestinians worked in Israel and most of their crops and products were sold there. A Bedouin walked his camel past my house, each day, on his way to Jerusalem to have the first ever Jewish and Israeli tourists in the old city have their pictures taken on his camel.
In those days I liked to take my motor scooter around the West Bank. I loved the smell of the citrus groves in Jericho, the smell of coffee and spices in the shuks of Hebron and the Golden Araq liquor of Ramallah. A few miles outside my village towards Jericho, on the hills off the road I’d see Bedouin tents. They’d welcome me for tea. There were 750,000 Palestinians on the West Bank. I was one of a few hundred Jews.
My second visit was with Emily celebrating our honeymoon in 1984. There were still only about 30,000 settlers. Many of these early settlers were armed reservists. Many were extremist, antagonistic and confrontational. There were huge military bases, extensive roads, and Israeli water and electricity lines. Tremendous mortgage incentives were being offered to settlers. 175,000 acres of Palestinian land had been bought up or stolen. Much of the undeveloped West Bank was in Israeli hands. General Sharon had declared that soon there would be 120,000 settlers. Gen. Sharon, and PM’s Begin, and Shamir and others were talking about “greater Israel”. Rabbi Kahane, elected Member of Knesset was talking about expelling Arabs. But when we drove through the West Bank we were oblivious to what was happening. We came across an abandoned refuge camp. As we wandered through this camp we had no idea of the history of the Palestinian people. No idea that the people of this camp had been refugees not once, but twice. I was still ignorant about what was happening, before my eyes, in the West Bank and what it would ultimately do to my faith. I would remain conveniently uninvolved, blissfully ignorant for many years. I saw, I read, I was there; but I didn’t want to believe that my people could do what they were doing. I still believed the myths that I had been taught in my youth. I believed that Israel had been a land without a people for a people without a land. I believed that peace would come.
Returning to Israel in Feb 2004 with my Mother and Father to celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday in Jerusalem. I was not surprised to see what I saw. I had, by then, been reading the English edition of the Israeli daily newspaper, Ha’aretz for many years. But I was deeply saddened, shaken; this visit was during the peak of the despicable suicide bombings. Two weeks after I left there was a terrible bombing at a corner just two blocks from the apt at which my parents were still saying. The goal of settlement of the West Bank was nearly complete. In my opinion, the created facts on the ground nearly precluded the possibility of a just two state solution. The settler population had grown to almost 250,000 not including another 200,000 in East Jerusalem. With settlements, house demolitions, checkpoints, closures, targeted assassinations the Israeli government had created a virtual prison of the West Bank filled with poverty and distrust. I saw a once pristine peaceful land; now a full-blown militarized state. I visited a Palestinian friend in Azzariayyeh and had to sneak through an opening in the wall which was nearing completion at Abu Dis. My pristine village would soon become a walled ghetto. The Palestinians were living in unimaginable humiliation. Jewish homes were built with government incentives. Palestinian homes were being bulldozed with IDF operators. There were Jewish Roads and Arab Roads. There was a “pass” system in which Palestinians would wait for hours at checkpoints to go from village to village. Israelis had green watered lawns and used 80% of the water from the aquifers, which flow below the West Bank; The Palestinians lived in poverty and oppression. Israelis travel for miles, to their sparkling West Bank homes, through tunnels and Jewish only roads never having to see an Arab.
… A wall twisted through the West bank walling Palestinians from their own fields, separating them from there own families, from there own schools from there own hospitals. The road on which I used to ride my motor scooter, a beautiful twisting road from Jerusalem thru the Judean Hills to Jericho now runs directly into a 27 foot high embankment of concrete that the Israeli’s call a security fence and the Palestinian’s call an apartheid wall. The wall cuts deeply into Palestinian lands. It surrounds towns completely. At this spot it is also a sightseeing wall because the Israeli side is easily accessible from Jerusalem. This is usually the only view that most Israelis or tourists get of the west bank. They proclaim “It’s a shonda ( a shame) but they brought it on themselves with their suicide bombings”. I wish they could see the other side.
Rabbi Asherman took me on a visit I will never forget. He took me to visit the Jahlain Bedouin. These are the same Bedouin that thirty-five years previously had proudly grazed their flocks outside my village and invited me to tea. Again I had tea with the Jahlain, but this time not in a tent, but their new home, a shipping container a few hundred yards from the garbage dump of Ma’ale Adummim. Ma’ale Adummim is a settlement of more than 30000 settlers outside Jerusalem, which nearly chops the west bank in half. This settlement was built on lands of the Jahlain and in compensation the Israeli Government has provided them the shipping containers and scenic view of a settlements garbage dump.
Our visit with the Bedouin was cut short because Rabbi Asherman was called to a house demolition. We went to visit the twisted remains of the house and visit the three generations that had lived in the house. Their home was destroyed because it was built without permit. Sole reason- no permit. A permit is virtually impossible for an Arab family any place the Israeli government covets the land for Jewish settlement. That includes most of Israel proper and much of the West Bank.
My fourth visit was in December 2005 with Emily Ben and Sam. This was the boy’s first visit to Israel. (Ben returned almost a year and a half ago to become a student at Hebrew University and since then Sam and Emily have each visited him.) Our visit was a traditional, ‘safe’, visit within the Green Line. We spent two weeks seeing the highlights from S’fat to Eilat.
I have a love/hate relationship with Israel. I love the people- they are my people-. I love the vibrant, diverse culture. I love their humor, their humanity, and their intellect. I love the land and its connection to our history. I love the peacefulness and the spirituality of the Kinneret and Tzfat. I love camping under the Roman Aqueducts of Caesarea at the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. I love Masada. Mostly though, I love Jerusalem. Most of my time in Israel has been spent wandering the alleys of the Old City; transformed in time and spirit. I love Jerusalem more than anyplace in the world; the hope it symbolizes brings me joy and its tragedy brings me tears
Today was my first visit back to Azzariayyeh since 2004. The wall is nearly complete and there are two openings; one for foot traffic only and one for cars. The wall has decimated Azzariayyeh. As part of Azzariayyeh was within the area annexed by Jerusalem in 1967 many folks in Azzariayyeh held Jerusalem residence cards. Now they are forced to choose; give up the Jerusalem identity card with its privileges and remain with friends and family behind the wall cut off from Jerusalem; the center of their children’s schools, their children’s grandparents or cousins, their doctors, the holy places. Or move to the other side of the wall and give up their homes, their family their homeland.
Most Palestinians don’t have that choice. They hold only West Bank papers. For them the wall is a prison. Not only does the wall separate Israeli from Palestinian, it separates Palestinians from Palestinians. There are at least a few hundred thousand Palestinians on the Israeli side of the wall. The ‘security wall’ as the Israelis call it. It separates families from families and farmers from their fields. Azzariayyeh has always been a suburb of Jerusalem. Like many of Jerusalem’s Arab suburbs including Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, Jerusalem is the center of its economic, family, cultural, medical, educational and religious life. A careful manipulation of roads, tunnels, road blocks, and settlements has destroyed any continuity between these communities and Jerusalem. The Jewish expansion of settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank has nearly cut the West Bank in two. These urban areas are almost completely cut off from one another. Needless to say the economy is in shambles. Today the unemployment rate is near 30%.
Today Ben and I visited my friends in Azzariayyeh, Suzana and Farads Arar -Zorko and 3 of 4 of their darling, loveable children. Nadia, Omar and Salma. Their older boy, Wamid, lives in Ramallah. Farid is an artist and used to be a writer and director for the Palestinian National Theater. The PNT no longer exists. No funding, no travel. His family is from the village of Kafr Ein, no far from their home in Azzariayyeh. It’s too hard to get there to care for the olive trees. The wall, the settlements and the checkpoints make it to hard to get there. And if he could would the settlers allow him to harvest his olives? Would he be able to get them to market?
Suzana founded ‘The Children of Bethany and Jerusalem Suburbs’ an NGO which promotes grassroots community work for the people and children of Palestine. Their projects include theatre, summer camps, circuses and computers for the people of Palestine.
Suzana lives for the children of Palestine. She teaches the kids English, brings them culture, and shows them hope. She told me that her heart aches as she sees the wall create a prison for their future. She also told me that her heart aches for the mother of the child soldier who humiliates and brutalizes them at the checkpoints. She’s started a cooperative for the women of Azzariayyeh. They embroider goods in the traditional Palestinian style and are looking for markets to sell the goods. I’m looking for ways to help them. Can you help?
As we talked they revealed some of their dreams. They dream that their children would have the same educational opportunities they had. That their children would be free to travel the world and to travel in Israel and even (imagine!) in the West Bank. Farid would love to write again and is searching for cracks in the Wall to do so. He’d love to bring theatre, art and culture back to the land in which his family has always lived. He’d love to revive his family’s ancient orchards.
I left them with sadness and some despair as the Wall with Azzariayyeh behind it disappeared behind me. And I left them with hope knowing that Ben would be seeing them often and that their goodness and generosity will remain in my life through that new friendship. I left with inspiration seeing that they had not given into despair and self-pity but continue working for hope and peace and a better future for the Children of Bethany and the Jerusalem suburbs… and the world.
As I fly back to the States I’m beginning to make some sense of the last two weeks. One thing is clear to me. The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and its ensuing deprivation of human rights and its destruction of the spirit of a people is a cancer. A cancer for both the Israelis and the Palestinians And I believe it’s a cancer on Judaism. It’s also absolutely clear to me that the only solution is to end the occupation and for the parties to negotiate a settlement, which creates a viable Palestinian state and security for Israel.
Within the borders of the occupied territories and Israel (the status quo or ‘Greater Israel’) the demographic argument is undeniable. Very soon within those borders there will be more Palestinians than Jews. There are only three possible outcomes.
1. If Israel continues the occupation, Jews will no longer be a majority in the historical Land of Israel; the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Israel will either need to give the Palestinians the vote and thus Israel will no longer be a Jewish state. Or
2. Continue the Status quo and continue on the road of “separation’ in which case Israel will no longer be a Democratic state. Or
3. Find a solution which has two states living side by side in piece and security.
As I fly home I am determined and discouraged.
Discouraged because I know how hard it is to open the eyes of American Jews and I know the power of the Israel Lobby (Aipac, the major Jewish organizations, and the American Jewish mindset of not ‘criticizing’ Israel) I’m discouraged because I see that Palestinians and Israelis no longer trust each other and that neither believes the other will make peace. I believe that the US government needs to actively and forcefully lead the states to an agreement. Without active Jewish political activity this will not happen.
And discouraged because the polls in Israel show that Bibi Netanyahu will likely be the next Prime Minister of Israel. It seems impossible that a peace treaty would come under his leadership. I believe that there is still a chance for peace but the gates are rapidly closing. Netanyahu began the end of the peace process when he was PM in 1996 and he surely will end it if elected in 2009.
And I fly home determined and hopeful because I have seen Palestinians and Israelis working together to lessen the occupation’s human rights abuses and to get back Palestinian farmers lands. I’m hopeful as I see them work so hard and bravely establishing the foundations for a warm peace which could someday follow a political solution.
I fly home inspired most of all by the Rabbis I have meet. RHR Rabbis Arik, Tirzah and Brian have each taught me so much. I am inspired by the work of Rabbis for Human Rights; fighting home demolitions, protecting Palestinians during the olive harvest, helping to regain their land, working for economic Justice for Israelis and Arabs in Israel, helping refugees to Israel. My commitment is rekindled by their worshp; Praying with their feet and hands and helping to repair the world and shining a light on Judaism that makes me proud to be Jewish. They put it all on the line in order to fight the human rights abuses sown by the occupation.
One of them said, “We don’t have the luxury of burnout.” Rabbis For Human Rights has inspired me to stop whining and get back to work. Israel will not survive as the Jewish democratic state that we love unless the occupation of 4.5 million Palestinians ends. Jews need to know what is happening.
I’m sure I have confused some of you, angered some of you. I would be very glad if you took a little time and visited the reports of our trip at www.rhr-na.org (click on Israel trip). And I would be gladder still if while on line you would make a donation to help Rabbis for Human Rights in their great work.
I saw ‘Rabbis for Human Rights’ choosing to look directly at the abuses of human rights in Israel and the West Back. Choosing to look and choosing to speak out! And choosing to work to repair the broken world!! I met many people who chose to say loudly what they knew in their hearts. I met many people willing to put their lives and livelihoods on the line.
I have been inspired by Rabbis for Human Rights. My commitment has been rekindled. What right do I have to sit in the comfort and safety of my home in Austin and whine? Over the last few years it has become crystal clear to me that in order to save Israel as the Jewish, democratic state that I love we need to end the occupation and create a just and viable two state solution. I will return home and renew that work.
Please go to the website of Rabbis for Human Rights- North America www.hr-na.org and click on the Israel Trip tab to read all about our trip. And if you to are inspired please make a donation. I believe that they are working to save Israel and to save Judaism.
Below are some of my thoughts about our trip. They are random and often skip the background one might need to understand. They are largely unedited. They are long. If they arrived in my in box no matter how much I cared I wouldn’t find time to read them.
So; above is the pitch, below are some of my thoughts and on the website you’ll find the best description of this amazing trip and the opportunity to donate to Rabbis For Human Rights North America.
11-09-2008; ON THE PLANE TO ISRAEL
I turned 60 this year and so did Israel. Emily, Sam and I had planned to celebrate both birthdays this past summer in Israel visiting with Ben. (He’s studying at Hebrew University) Those plans didn’t materialize for many reasons. Emily did get to go and had a wonderful visit with Ben and his friends in Jerusalem. Sam visited last winter.
Now it’s my turn. I’m writing this on the flight to Tel Aviv. I will be joining Rabbis for Human Rights – North America on a ten-day mission to Israel and the West Bank. The mission is part of RHR-NA yearlong Pursuit of Justice Campaign marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel and the 20th anniversary of the founding of Rabbis for Human Rights. We will be visiting with the leaders and members of Rabbis for Human Rights and other Israeli human rights groups like Betzelem, the Israeli Human Rights organizations; Machsom Watch, women who witness the treatment of Palestinians at checkpoints, Shovrim Shtika, soldiers who break the silence about human rights abuses, and many others.
This will be my fifth visit. The first was in 1969 when I did my junior year in Jerusalem at the Hebrew University. I lived for a half a year in an Arab village on the West Bank and half the time in Jewish West Jerusalem. That shaped me in many ways. More on that later. The second time was with Emily on our honeymoon in 1984. The third was for a celebration of my Dad’s 80th birthday in 2005. And the 4th was with Ben, Sam and Emily in 2006.
This visit has two purposes. The first is to celebrate our 60th birthdays. (Mine and Israel’s) and second to explore the bond I have with Israel and to examine the bond I have with Judaism and Jews.
I began working for peace between Israel and Palestine almost a decade ago. For five years early in this decade I worked actively with as small group of concerned Jews trying to explain to the Austin Jewish community what we believed the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank was doing to the Israelis, the Palestinians and to Judaism. Over the past few years I have become disheartened. With each new counterproductive action or statement by the Palestinians, or Israelis, or the American Jewish community or by the Bush administration I have become more disillusioned. As the silence from the Jewish community becomes louder and louder my alienation deepens and my faith lessens.
This trip is as much serendipity as planned. Other commitments over the summer caused us to drop plans for a family visit then an e-mail announcement of this trip from Rabbis for Human Rights put the idea in my head. Emily, lovingly, gently nudged me onto the plane. And here I am a few hours from Tel Aviv wondering; Will I learn anything new? Will my spiritual connection to Israel and Jerusalem be strengthened or will it be severed?
11-13-2008
This is the third day of the trip and I had intended to write an E-mail daily. It ain’t gonna happen. Instead I’m going to outline most of our trip and record only my personal highlights and thoughts. Others who write much better and more quickly are keeping a blog of our trip at www.rhr-na.org (click on Israel trip). Check it out!
DAY ONE; MEET THE GROUP
When I go out in Austin I’m very often the oldest person there. There are 38 folks signed up for this trip. I guess at 60 I’m right in the middle. Two American Rabbis and a writing professor are leading the group. There’s also a tour guide and a money person/ administrator. The group is about ¾ Jewish and ¼ Christian. Exclusive of the leaders there are about 6 or 7 American congregational Rabbis (Reform, Renewal, Reconstructionist etc). There is probably the almost the same number of Christian Clergy.
DAY TWO; PLANTING OLIVE TREES and DANNY RUBENSTIEN
I’m not fond of planting trees for symbolism. Whenever I’m asked to do so I try to avoid it. Planting these olive trees on the West Bank is symbolic also. They probably won’t survive. We planted the trees on Palestinian fields in a valley below Israeli settlements. The settlers will probably uproot the trees soon. If not I don’t think they will survive anyway. The fields are about a ¼ of a mile from the Palestinian village but a mound of dirt placed there by the military authority blocks the road. There’s a water truck ready to water the trees but it can’t get past the roadblock.
Today we watched a small battle for the land play out as we planted. Much of the activity on the West Bank is just that; a struggle by the settlers to claim the land and a struggle by the Palestinians to claim it back. In truth that’s the nut of the conflict. Land. Borders.
The battle for the land is played out on many scales;
1.The occupation by civilians in territories captured in war is illegal as defined in the Fourth Geneva Convention. The entire world, except for Israel, sees the Israeli settlements as illegal. Today Israel has around 500,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
2. To begin or expand a settlement settlers illegally (often even by Israeli law) occupy a hilltop and set up a trailer or armed encampment. Various Government agencies wink and nod and provide services and legitimacy
3. Settlers steal neighboring lands in a multitude of ways.
Today, As we planted Rabbi Arik Asherman of Rabbis For Human Rights(RHR) interceded again and again on behalf of the Palestinian farmers as the Israeli military authority and the Israeli police sided with the settlers in this little battle. Another battle Rabbis for Human Rights is waging on this land is the legal battle to regain lands stolen from the settlers. Their main weapon is a dynamic young Palestinian lawyer. She is an Israeli Christian from Nazareth and she has been successful in winning back hundreds of dunhams of land illegally expropriated. RHR told us that they were optimistic that they can win back many more dunhams. For many of the expropriations the Palestinians had no lawyer, especially one that understood the language of the proceedings: Hebrew. Many Palestinian villagers gave up their lands out of fear. With more funding for more lawyers RHR is confident that they can win back thousands more.
These battles at first seemed irrelevant to me given that this orchard and these settlements are deep within the West Bank far away from most of the settlement blocks which are closer to the green line. If there is a settlement surely these settlements will be returned and the lands will revert back to Palestinian ownership. I can’t conceive of a solution that does not return most of the West Bank to the Palestinians.
These little battles are about returning livelihoods to the indigenous farmers. But I believe it takes almost 10 years for new olive trees to bear fruit. Olives are the mainstay of the economy. Many of the olive orchards have been expropriated, hacked down or burned by the army or the settlers. The Palestinian are prevented from harvesting much of the remaining by settler violence, army and settler harassment, by roadblocks and by the wall which often separates Palestinians from their lands.
These battles may slow down of the huge settlement project. They also bring Palestinians and Israelis together in battling the human rights violations of the occupation. Maybe they are laying the groundwork for some day in the future when the two peoples will live peacefully as neighbors. Most Palestinians have never seen a helpful Israeli. They’ve only seen Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers.
(For a bigger picture of how the lands upon which the settlements are built have been expropriated see the Israeli government’s own Sassoon Report; http://www.peacenow.org/hot.asp?cid=368
Again go to www.rhr-na.org (click on Israel trip) to see and learn more about what we saw.
After dinner we meet with Danny Rubenstein. Of all people he is most responsible for my being on this trip. About 8 years ago someone forwarded me an article from Ha’aretz (a liberal Israeli newspaper available on line in English www.haaretz.com). It was about what was happening on the West Bank. It shook me. Since that day I had faithfully followed Ha’aretz’ reporting from the West Bank (often Rubenstein) and their reporting on the peace process, the second intifada and life and politics in Israel.
I was particularly receptive to that initial article because I had lived on the West Bank in 1968-1969 when it was a beautiful and, from my perspective, a peaceful place. (More in another E-mail)
Danny has recently retired from Ha’aretz but I hadn’t known because over the past year I have given up the peace work. I have grown weary of banging my head against the wall. Over the last year I rarely read Ha’aretz.
I had been told by an associate Rabbi (since moved on) at my Reform Congregation that the Social Action committee’s work presenting a four-week Union For Reform Judaism sponsored ‘Teach In On the conflict’ was dismissed by the congregation as a “chuck” thing. Read; left wing, kooky, irrelevant. And that more importantly he told me that the leadership of the Reform movement and the Religious Action Center were out of touch with Jews in the pews. I had been told by a “machor”, a leader of our congregation’s “Project Transformation” for inclusively, that our work for a two-state solution and our involvement in the Interreligious Campaign against Torture was too “political” and that it was driving large contributors out of the congregation. I’m afraid that the desire for inclusivity, for an “open tent” has kept Judaism silent on the critical issue of today. How does Israel survive and prosper as a Jewish democratic state?
DAY THREE; ETHIOPIAN OBSORPTION CENTER, BEDOUIN COMMUNITY AND SDEROTH.
Three long and fascinating stories Again; www.RHR-NA.org
We sat in Sderoth with our host and hostess in their garden looking at Gaza a few miles away. These folks have lived for years with the threat of Qassam rockets falling, sometimes by the dozens, daily. We sat in their lovely garden and heard gunfire from a battle at the border. This is not a settlement in occupied territories. This is a kibbutz originally founded for new immigrants in the early 1950’s as an absorption center. These qassams along with thousands of years of oppression, the Holocaust, The Hebron massacre of 1929, The Arab invasion of 1948, The six day war of 1967, The Yom Kippur War, Munich, The Achille Lauro, The depraved bombings of the second intifada… all explain the fear and the mistrust which justify a wall and a dehumanized image of the other. How do two peoples get over the fear and distrust of each other which is almost genetic?
DAY FOUR, Morning; Hebron
I knew about Hebron. I was there in 1968. The same year the settler movement was born here. In 1995 Baruch Goldstein began a new and horrible cycle of violence by massacring 29 Palestinians as they prayed in a Mosque at the tomb of the Patriarchs. There is a memorial to him in Hebron today.
I’ve been reading Israeli newspapers for years and staying informed. I didn’t think anything would surprise me. I was prepared for settler violence. I was prepared to see settlers occupying and controlling the population. But I wasn’t prepared to see the absolute control of the police and the military over the Palestinians. I wasn’t prepared for Hebron. Picture this; the street we stand on is a ‘sterile’ street. A ‘sterile’ street means no Palestinians may walk on it. Their front doors and shops open onto the street but they can’t walk on it. Their front doors are locked by the police from the outside and their windows are caged (for their protection)
On one caged balcony the caged children stare out at the excitement; our ‘sightseeing’ group of about 50 (including around 10 Rabbis) is surrounded – for our protection- by at least an equal number of policemen. The excitement is a confrontation. We are being harassed by the police for our protection. They won’t let us buy from the local shop owners. They won’t let us see the holy site, the Tomb of the Patriarchs. They threaten us with arrest. They say we are an ‘unauthorized demonstration’ and are subject to arrest. They tell, Mikkhael Manekin, our tour leader that he is forever forbidden from praying at the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Mikkhael is an orthodox Jew; he is also a founder of ‘Breaking the Silence’. http://www.shovrimshtika.org/
On another caged balcony pigeons coo. There is a Star of David painted on a sealed door below. How do they get out of their cages? I saw a video not long ago that showed a Palestinian woman climbing a ladder up through her roof to access the area behind her house. Rabbi Walt told me that since then they have knocked more comfortable holes in the back walls. The road is closed to Palestinians. So they must carry their groceries in and their dead out like this. It can take 24 hours to get an ambulance. When women are eight months pregnant they move out of their houses to have access to a clinic. Don’t worry. The next block is only partially ‘sterile’. There is a division on it and the Palestinians get to walk on a quarter of it.
The shouk and the bustling commercial center that I remember form 1968 and 1984 is empty except for the police, the military and a few settlers who are screaming curses at us. Deserted. A ghost town. Why?
Because this section of Hebron is occupied by 600 settlers and 200 Yeshiva students. The policy of separation is the only way to control the violence coming from both directions. ‘Breaking the Silence’ is a group of soldiers who have courageously decided to talk about their experiences and their roles in the occupation. The authorities have decided that they don’t want breaking the silence to break the silence. Silence is good for occupation.
Jimmy carter was vilified by Jews for using the A word. But what we saw today is clearly Apartheid. Apartheid in Afrikaans means separation. In Hebrew the word ‘Hafrada’ means separation.
The Wall (http://www.btselem.org/English/Separation_Barrier/) is usually referred to by the Israeli press as the ‘hafrada’ or the ‘separation’ barrier. Its intention is to separate Israelis and Palestinians. (Also to provide security for Israelis and to unilaterally define the border of a future Palestinian state.) I’m sure the definition of apartheid is different from person to person; what we saw today was clearly separation based on race and ethnicity. We can’t use the A word because it shuts down the Jewish mind, closes the Jewish eye. . You have to learn more about Hebron. You are not going to believe it. I saw it and I can’t!!
DAY FIVE; BACK TO JERUSALEM FOR SHABBAT
We arrive back ‘home’ in the early afternoon in time to join Jerusalem preparing for Shabbat. We head to Machane Yehuda, the giant Israeli outdoor market in central Western Jerusalem. As Shabbat approaches the City is busy, festive, and buoyant. It buzzes with excitement and expectation. Near the old city you hear the muezzins call to prayer for Friday afternoon prayers reminding us that Jerusalem is a mixed city.
The debate on whether Jerusalem should be ‘divided or undivided’ speaks to us on many levels of history, of memories, of hopes and of fears. My prayer… Prayer? How does one pray without a belief in an acting, caring god? But ‘fervent hope’ doesn’t express the depth of my prayer. My prayer is to see Jerusalem as a symbol of hope; an undivided city where all faiths live in peace and friendship. A city where both Israelis and Palestinians have their capitols and where all faiths live together. This trip has shown us countless examples where the faiths are working together to restore human rights to the lands we love.
Thirty percent of annexed Jerusalem is non-Jewish, mostly Muslim Palestinians. It is the policy of the government to keep the city 65% Jewish. This official policy is the guideline for the unofficial policies of the municipality. -More later)
Machane Yehuda was very different when we celebrated my Dad’s 80th birthday in 2004. That was still during the Second Intifada. On of the most gruesome, horrible bombing happened on a Friday afternoon just like this. On this visit I walked past that corner of many times going to and from our Hotel in Bakka and the Ha ir mercahsite (Central West Jerusalem) or ir ha’atiqa (the old city). A few days after I left in 2004 there was a murderous bus blast here. It was near the apartment in which my parents still lived. Those days of bombing brought a dismal death to the spirit of Jerusalem. Most people didn’t go out unless they had to. They avoided public places. It’s very different today. The city is alive. The streets are teeming. The nightclubs are overflowing. The cafes are bustling. Different; For Israelis anyway.
Security improved with the wall (more later) and more importantly it improved as movement was stifled on the West Bank. Palestinians can’t go from town to town without spending numerous hours at endless checkpoints. Without the violence most Israeli’s have pushed ‘The Situation’ to the edges of their consciousness. For most Palestinians the daily suffering and humiliation is never out of their minds.
Ben and I and his friend Matt celebrated Shabbat at Congregation Kol Ha’nashima in Jerusalem. The synagogue was full. Israelis.Americans. Other nationalities. Young and old. And lots of Rabbis. The service was vibrant, all in Hebrew and most of it sung to beautiful tunes. Kol Ha’nashima’s Rabbi is Levi Kelman. He didn’t give a sermon but he preached earlier in the week with his feet and his eyes as he toured Hebron with us. That commitment is easily the greatest, most inspiring sermon I’ve ever heard.
I realized earlier in the trip that the most inspirational part of this trip was my traveling companions. They were willing to see the ugly side of Israel and still allowed themselves to be moved and inspired by the countless examples of heroism and Tikkun Olam that we were seeing daily. By far the most inspiring was he presence of the seven American Rabbis who had the courage to join us on this trip. The thing I’ve found most disturbing over the past years is the unwillingness of our American Jewish leadership, lay and clerical, to look. I’m certain that each of these Rabbis has been fundamentally changed by this trip. Their situations are different and how they go forward will be as individual as it will be difficult. However they go forward they are a great inspiration.
DAY SIX; SHABBAT
It was a very different kind of Shabbat. This was the first of two trips this week back to Al Azzariayyeh (Bethany). I lived there for more than a half a year in 1968. That was my first trip to Israel. I went to take my junior year at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I lived in the dormitories at Kiryat Ha Yovel in Jewish West Jerusalem and for seven months in the Palestinian West Bank town of Al Azzariayyeh, the biblical Bethany. With my cousin Carl I traveled to nearly every corner of the State and learned to love the land, the people. We sat on my veranda in Azzariyyeh overlooking the Judean hills. In those days Azzariayyeh was just 30 minutes from the Tachana mercazite- the central bus station -of West Jerusalem- But the West Bank was worlds apart. The West bank and East Jerusalem had been ruled by Jordan until the 6-day war the previous year. The Palestinians seemed to be looking forward to a better life than they had under Jordanian rule. Many Palestinians worked in Israel and most of their crops and products were sold there. A Bedouin walked his camel past my house, each day, on his way to Jerusalem to have the first ever Jewish and Israeli tourists in the old city have their pictures taken on his camel.
In those days I liked to take my motor scooter around the West Bank. I loved the smell of the citrus groves in Jericho, the smell of coffee and spices in the shuks of Hebron and the Golden Araq liquor of Ramallah. A few miles outside my village towards Jericho, on the hills off the road I’d see Bedouin tents. They’d welcome me for tea. There were 750,000 Palestinians on the West Bank. I was one of a few hundred Jews.
My second visit was with Emily celebrating our honeymoon in 1984. There were still only about 30,000 settlers. Many of these early settlers were armed reservists. Many were extremist, antagonistic and confrontational. There were huge military bases, extensive roads, and Israeli water and electricity lines. Tremendous mortgage incentives were being offered to settlers. 175,000 acres of Palestinian land had been bought up or stolen. Much of the undeveloped West Bank was in Israeli hands. General Sharon had declared that soon there would be 120,000 settlers. Gen. Sharon, and PM’s Begin, and Shamir and others were talking about “greater Israel”. Rabbi Kahane, elected Member of Knesset was talking about expelling Arabs. But when we drove through the West Bank we were oblivious to what was happening. We came across an abandoned refuge camp. As we wandered through this camp we had no idea of the history of the Palestinian people. No idea that the people of this camp had been refugees not once, but twice. I was still ignorant about what was happening, before my eyes, in the West Bank and what it would ultimately do to my faith. I would remain conveniently uninvolved, blissfully ignorant for many years. I saw, I read, I was there; but I didn’t want to believe that my people could do what they were doing. I still believed the myths that I had been taught in my youth. I believed that Israel had been a land without a people for a people without a land. I believed that peace would come.
Returning to Israel in Feb 2004 with my Mother and Father to celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday in Jerusalem. I was not surprised to see what I saw. I had, by then, been reading the English edition of the Israeli daily newspaper, Ha’aretz for many years. But I was deeply saddened, shaken; this visit was during the peak of the despicable suicide bombings. Two weeks after I left there was a terrible bombing at a corner just two blocks from the apt at which my parents were still saying. The goal of settlement of the West Bank was nearly complete. In my opinion, the created facts on the ground nearly precluded the possibility of a just two state solution. The settler population had grown to almost 250,000 not including another 200,000 in East Jerusalem. With settlements, house demolitions, checkpoints, closures, targeted assassinations the Israeli government had created a virtual prison of the West Bank filled with poverty and distrust. I saw a once pristine peaceful land; now a full-blown militarized state. I visited a Palestinian friend in Azzariayyeh and had to sneak through an opening in the wall which was nearing completion at Abu Dis. My pristine village would soon become a walled ghetto. The Palestinians were living in unimaginable humiliation. Jewish homes were built with government incentives. Palestinian homes were being bulldozed with IDF operators. There were Jewish Roads and Arab Roads. There was a “pass” system in which Palestinians would wait for hours at checkpoints to go from village to village. Israelis had green watered lawns and used 80% of the water from the aquifers, which flow below the West Bank; The Palestinians lived in poverty and oppression. Israelis travel for miles, to their sparkling West Bank homes, through tunnels and Jewish only roads never having to see an Arab.
… A wall twisted through the West bank walling Palestinians from their own fields, separating them from there own families, from there own schools from there own hospitals. The road on which I used to ride my motor scooter, a beautiful twisting road from Jerusalem thru the Judean Hills to Jericho now runs directly into a 27 foot high embankment of concrete that the Israeli’s call a security fence and the Palestinian’s call an apartheid wall. The wall cuts deeply into Palestinian lands. It surrounds towns completely. At this spot it is also a sightseeing wall because the Israeli side is easily accessible from Jerusalem. This is usually the only view that most Israelis or tourists get of the west bank. They proclaim “It’s a shonda ( a shame) but they brought it on themselves with their suicide bombings”. I wish they could see the other side.
Rabbi Asherman took me on a visit I will never forget. He took me to visit the Jahlain Bedouin. These are the same Bedouin that thirty-five years previously had proudly grazed their flocks outside my village and invited me to tea. Again I had tea with the Jahlain, but this time not in a tent, but their new home, a shipping container a few hundred yards from the garbage dump of Ma’ale Adummim. Ma’ale Adummim is a settlement of more than 30000 settlers outside Jerusalem, which nearly chops the west bank in half. This settlement was built on lands of the Jahlain and in compensation the Israeli Government has provided them the shipping containers and scenic view of a settlements garbage dump.
Our visit with the Bedouin was cut short because Rabbi Asherman was called to a house demolition. We went to visit the twisted remains of the house and visit the three generations that had lived in the house. Their home was destroyed because it was built without permit. Sole reason- no permit. A permit is virtually impossible for an Arab family any place the Israeli government covets the land for Jewish settlement. That includes most of Israel proper and much of the West Bank.
My fourth visit was in December 2005 with Emily Ben and Sam. This was the boy’s first visit to Israel. (Ben returned almost a year and a half ago to become a student at Hebrew University and since then Sam and Emily have each visited him.) Our visit was a traditional, ‘safe’, visit within the Green Line. We spent two weeks seeing the highlights from S’fat to Eilat.
I have a love/hate relationship with Israel. I love the people- they are my people-. I love the vibrant, diverse culture. I love their humor, their humanity, and their intellect. I love the land and its connection to our history. I love the peacefulness and the spirituality of the Kinneret and Tzfat. I love camping under the Roman Aqueducts of Caesarea at the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. I love Masada. Mostly though, I love Jerusalem. Most of my time in Israel has been spent wandering the alleys of the Old City; transformed in time and spirit. I love Jerusalem more than anyplace in the world; the hope it symbolizes brings me joy and its tragedy brings me tears
Today was my first visit back to Azzariayyeh since 2004. The wall is nearly complete and there are two openings; one for foot traffic only and one for cars. The wall has decimated Azzariayyeh. As part of Azzariayyeh was within the area annexed by Jerusalem in 1967 many folks in Azzariayyeh held Jerusalem residence cards. Now they are forced to choose; give up the Jerusalem identity card with its privileges and remain with friends and family behind the wall cut off from Jerusalem; the center of their children’s schools, their children’s grandparents or cousins, their doctors, the holy places. Or move to the other side of the wall and give up their homes, their family their homeland.
Most Palestinians don’t have that choice. They hold only West Bank papers. For them the wall is a prison. Not only does the wall separate Israeli from Palestinian, it separates Palestinians from Palestinians. There are at least a few hundred thousand Palestinians on the Israeli side of the wall. The ‘security wall’ as the Israelis call it. It separates families from families and farmers from their fields. Azzariayyeh has always been a suburb of Jerusalem. Like many of Jerusalem’s Arab suburbs including Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, Jerusalem is the center of its economic, family, cultural, medical, educational and religious life. A careful manipulation of roads, tunnels, road blocks, and settlements has destroyed any continuity between these communities and Jerusalem. The Jewish expansion of settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank has nearly cut the West Bank in two. These urban areas are almost completely cut off from one another. Needless to say the economy is in shambles. Today the unemployment rate is near 30%.
Today Ben and I visited my friends in Azzariayyeh, Suzana and Farads Arar -Zorko and 3 of 4 of their darling, loveable children. Nadia, Omar and Salma. Their older boy, Wamid, lives in Ramallah. Farid is an artist and used to be a writer and director for the Palestinian National Theater. The PNT no longer exists. No funding, no travel. His family is from the village of Kafr Ein, no far from their home in Azzariayyeh. It’s too hard to get there to care for the olive trees. The wall, the settlements and the checkpoints make it to hard to get there. And if he could would the settlers allow him to harvest his olives? Would he be able to get them to market?
Suzana founded ‘The Children of Bethany and Jerusalem Suburbs’ an NGO which promotes grassroots community work for the people and children of Palestine. Their projects include theatre, summer camps, circuses and computers for the people of Palestine.
Suzana lives for the children of Palestine. She teaches the kids English, brings them culture, and shows them hope. She told me that her heart aches as she sees the wall create a prison for their future. She also told me that her heart aches for the mother of the child soldier who humiliates and brutalizes them at the checkpoints. She’s started a cooperative for the women of Azzariayyeh. They embroider goods in the traditional Palestinian style and are looking for markets to sell the goods. I’m looking for ways to help them. Can you help?
As we talked they revealed some of their dreams. They dream that their children would have the same educational opportunities they had. That their children would be free to travel the world and to travel in Israel and even (imagine!) in the West Bank. Farid would love to write again and is searching for cracks in the Wall to do so. He’d love to bring theatre, art and culture back to the land in which his family has always lived. He’d love to revive his family’s ancient orchards.
I left them with sadness and some despair as the Wall with Azzariayyeh behind it disappeared behind me. And I left them with hope knowing that Ben would be seeing them often and that their goodness and generosity will remain in my life through that new friendship. I left with inspiration seeing that they had not given into despair and self-pity but continue working for hope and peace and a better future for the Children of Bethany and the Jerusalem suburbs… and the world.
As I fly back to the States I’m beginning to make some sense of the last two weeks. One thing is clear to me. The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and its ensuing deprivation of human rights and its destruction of the spirit of a people is a cancer. A cancer for both the Israelis and the Palestinians And I believe it’s a cancer on Judaism. It’s also absolutely clear to me that the only solution is to end the occupation and for the parties to negotiate a settlement, which creates a viable Palestinian state and security for Israel.
Within the borders of the occupied territories and Israel (the status quo or ‘Greater Israel’) the demographic argument is undeniable. Very soon within those borders there will be more Palestinians than Jews. There are only three possible outcomes.
1. If Israel continues the occupation, Jews will no longer be a majority in the historical Land of Israel; the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Israel will either need to give the Palestinians the vote and thus Israel will no longer be a Jewish state. Or
2. Continue the Status quo and continue on the road of “separation’ in which case Israel will no longer be a Democratic state. Or
3. Find a solution which has two states living side by side in piece and security.
As I fly home I am determined and discouraged.
Discouraged because I know how hard it is to open the eyes of American Jews and I know the power of the Israel Lobby (Aipac, the major Jewish organizations, and the American Jewish mindset of not ‘criticizing’ Israel) I’m discouraged because I see that Palestinians and Israelis no longer trust each other and that neither believes the other will make peace. I believe that the US government needs to actively and forcefully lead the states to an agreement. Without active Jewish political activity this will not happen.
And discouraged because the polls in Israel show that Bibi Netanyahu will likely be the next Prime Minister of Israel. It seems impossible that a peace treaty would come under his leadership. I believe that there is still a chance for peace but the gates are rapidly closing. Netanyahu began the end of the peace process when he was PM in 1996 and he surely will end it if elected in 2009.
And I fly home determined and hopeful because I have seen Palestinians and Israelis working together to lessen the occupation’s human rights abuses and to get back Palestinian farmers lands. I’m hopeful as I see them work so hard and bravely establishing the foundations for a warm peace which could someday follow a political solution.
I fly home inspired most of all by the Rabbis I have meet. RHR Rabbis Arik, Tirzah and Brian have each taught me so much. I am inspired by the work of Rabbis for Human Rights; fighting home demolitions, protecting Palestinians during the olive harvest, helping to regain their land, working for economic Justice for Israelis and Arabs in Israel, helping refugees to Israel. My commitment is rekindled by their worshp; Praying with their feet and hands and helping to repair the world and shining a light on Judaism that makes me proud to be Jewish. They put it all on the line in order to fight the human rights abuses sown by the occupation.
One of them said, “We don’t have the luxury of burnout.” Rabbis For Human Rights has inspired me to stop whining and get back to work. Israel will not survive as the Jewish democratic state that we love unless the occupation of 4.5 million Palestinians ends. Jews need to know what is happening.
I’m sure I have confused some of you, angered some of you. I would be very glad if you took a little time and visited the reports of our trip at www.rhr-na.org (click on Israel trip). And I would be gladder still if while on line you would make a donation to help Rabbis for Human Rights in their great work.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The Morning Commute
A man sells coffee and tea on the street. From under his moustache, a gold tooth glimmers in an easy smile. His makeshift shop lies at the base of a high metal fence that’s laced with razor wire like icing on a cake. The fence protects a building whose very foundation was built on the fault lines of fear. Though devoid and sterile it still breeds like roaches more fear and its ugly offspring, hate. This stony ediface is a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. While I stand inside I think this is a land of hard things, Israel. Softness is steam from the hot drinks the man outside pours and just as ethereal.
In the lost hours of pre-dawn mornings, he brews thick Turkish coffee in an elegant cone-shaped pot etched with exotic design. Its spout arches, opening up like a petal in bloom. The long straight handle is wrapped in duct tape meant to shield his calloused hands from burns. A few squat stainless steel teapots boil water like engines over a charcoal grill that’s held up on either end by blocks of Jerusalem stone blackened from use.
His morning rush is over by the hour the dawn breaks into long shadows once the sun has finally risen high enough to begin to warm the coldest of desert nights. His customers come from the other side — from Bethlehem into Jerusalem, from Palestine into Israel. They’ve waited a long time and they are thirsty.
Starting at 3am, 4am, every work day, thousands of commuters stand en masse on the Bethlehem-side to funnel one by one, through this structure dedicated to the bureaucracies of security: paperwork, permits, magnetic id cards and the harsh realities of today’s guarded zones: metal detectors, body searches, handscans and no toilets.
Everyday the most heavily-armed are ordered to hover and keep watch from up above, pacing on their paths of steel.
Everyday his customers are routed through the deepening abyss of separation in order to work, to go to school, to get health care, to pray at the holiest of sites.
Everyday his customers pass by a thick glassed-in booth and are spoken to in foreign tongue through muffled intercoms or loud bullhorns — dividing ever-more both natives by language and by culture, the Arab and the Jew.
And everyday his customers must present themselves back at the checkpoint by a specified hour or risk losing their permitted status that allows them to even cross.
Once through the checkpoint, his regulars — these men, women, children — fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters — like us — hurry on to live out their day, their lives.
Holding children close, belts still in hand, they lay down a few coins for their morning cup of coffee, their morning cup of tea. Everyday, just like us.
Dedicated to the women of Machsom Watch an organization of Israeli peace activists and Rabbis for Human Rights. By Ali Berlow.
In the lost hours of pre-dawn mornings, he brews thick Turkish coffee in an elegant cone-shaped pot etched with exotic design. Its spout arches, opening up like a petal in bloom. The long straight handle is wrapped in duct tape meant to shield his calloused hands from burns. A few squat stainless steel teapots boil water like engines over a charcoal grill that’s held up on either end by blocks of Jerusalem stone blackened from use.
His morning rush is over by the hour the dawn breaks into long shadows once the sun has finally risen high enough to begin to warm the coldest of desert nights. His customers come from the other side — from Bethlehem into Jerusalem, from Palestine into Israel. They’ve waited a long time and they are thirsty.
Starting at 3am, 4am, every work day, thousands of commuters stand en masse on the Bethlehem-side to funnel one by one, through this structure dedicated to the bureaucracies of security: paperwork, permits, magnetic id cards and the harsh realities of today’s guarded zones: metal detectors, body searches, handscans and no toilets.
Everyday the most heavily-armed are ordered to hover and keep watch from up above, pacing on their paths of steel.
Everyday his customers are routed through the deepening abyss of separation in order to work, to go to school, to get health care, to pray at the holiest of sites.
Everyday his customers pass by a thick glassed-in booth and are spoken to in foreign tongue through muffled intercoms or loud bullhorns — dividing ever-more both natives by language and by culture, the Arab and the Jew.
And everyday his customers must present themselves back at the checkpoint by a specified hour or risk losing their permitted status that allows them to even cross.
Once through the checkpoint, his regulars — these men, women, children — fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters — like us — hurry on to live out their day, their lives.
Holding children close, belts still in hand, they lay down a few coins for their morning cup of coffee, their morning cup of tea. Everyday, just like us.
Dedicated to the women of Machsom Watch an organization of Israeli peace activists and Rabbis for Human Rights. By Ali Berlow.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Reactions to a Visit to Hebron
We visited
Imagine, someone told me NO for no reason. Me, who believes in the value of being reasonable, that if everyone knew what the other knew then one could easily find a solution.
Being white, I really never experienced that kind of irrationality that before. I could more or less get what I wanted by just asking. I was not prepared even at 66 to know the impotence of a crazy situation. Just because, just because. Even my parents who could be capricious like any human being provided some avenue for discussion and getting around an ultimatum. But not here.
Now, imagine, I am not a White American Jew but a Palestinian native of
The law is on my side—but the law is not enforced and rules change to accommodate the settlers. The settlers violate civil, sometimes criminal and certainly moral law but they control the situation. In the news we see the police and the army marshaled to protect Israelis from the Palestinian terrorist, but here it is to protect us and even the tourists from the Jewish settler. How and why, I do not yet understand. But I know it is so.
Why do the police not enforce the laws from
As a visitor to this city and to the State of Israel I feel like the goal of the separation and all the rules were made to make the life of the average Palestinian difficult and unpredictable. In such an environment maybe the Palestinians will all just leave and go to Jordan or someplace else. Most of the Arabs in this sector have voluntarily moved over to the Palestinian sector. How can anyone live like my lady in
Monday, November 3, 2008
What's in a Map?
I spent some time in Borders Monday, looking for children's books to take to the Bedouin village we will be visiting as part of our trip to Israel and the West Bank. At a discount store, I riffled through several books with Disney princesses and Big Bird and Elmo, but didn't know if they were appropriate: would kids would know who the characters were and, if not, would the books make any sense? A children's World Atlas was on sale, a big beautiful book like the ones my kids used to page through endlessly, and which they kept for many years, enjoying both the pictures and then, when they could read better, memorizing huge amounts of trivia that they loved to share.
I had the book in my hand and was headed to the checkout when realized I should check what it said about the land where it would be read. The map showed Israel, with a strip for Gaza, but the word Palestine or Palestinian was, of course, nowhere to be seen. I remembered the only other time I was in this part of the world, in 1994, when a group from my synagogue -- dedicated to pursuing a two-state solution in the land -- visited the Deheishe refugee camp. We found ourselves seated under a framed map, in which the "one state" illustrated was Palestine, which shouldn't have shocked us, but did.
I took the Atlas back and picked up another big one, a Children's Encyclopedia. This time, in checking Israel, I saw a listing for Islam and knew I didn't have enough knowledge about the subject to know if the information in the book was correct or if it would be considered offensive. I went back yet again and this time picked up an Encyclopedia of Animals.
Was I making this too complicated? Or had I avoided being seen as insensitive or ignorant? If so, are there other gifts I'm bringing that will say something I don't want them to? I realize how much I don't know.
I had the book in my hand and was headed to the checkout when realized I should check what it said about the land where it would be read. The map showed Israel, with a strip for Gaza, but the word Palestine or Palestinian was, of course, nowhere to be seen. I remembered the only other time I was in this part of the world, in 1994, when a group from my synagogue -- dedicated to pursuing a two-state solution in the land -- visited the Deheishe refugee camp. We found ourselves seated under a framed map, in which the "one state" illustrated was Palestine, which shouldn't have shocked us, but did.
I took the Atlas back and picked up another big one, a Children's Encyclopedia. This time, in checking Israel, I saw a listing for Islam and knew I didn't have enough knowledge about the subject to know if the information in the book was correct or if it would be considered offensive. I went back yet again and this time picked up an Encyclopedia of Animals.
Was I making this too complicated? Or had I avoided being seen as insensitive or ignorant? If so, are there other gifts I'm bringing that will say something I don't want them to? I realize how much I don't know.
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