Two separate pieces from my daughter's travels in Israel and Palestine. The first from her participation in an Interfaith Peace Builders' delegation where she got to meet and hear from the founder of Breaking the Silence, the organization described in Wikipedia as:
Israeli Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) established by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers and veterans who collect and provide testimonies about their military service in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem during the Second Intifada, giving serving and discharged Israeli personnel and reservists a platform to confidentially describe their experience in the Israeli-occupied territories.
The second from the perspective of a visiting Palestinian-American family who have to deal with all the borders and suspicions on every side.
Where: Scenic overlook in East Jerusalem
Who: AFSC Delegation, African Heritage Delegation, and Micha Kurz
Micha Kurz, former Israeli solider, founder of Breaking the Silence, organizer for ICAHD, and new founder of Grassroots Jerusalem, is sitting with arms spread wide and kinetic next to one of our delegation facilitators, Emily. We are fanned out around them, standing or sitting on the steps facing a ledge whose backdrop offers a wide zoom view of Bedouin camps, Palestinian villages, and Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem.
Micha points out the road with the wall down the middle heading to West Jerusalem and explains that when the settlements in these areas are finished, one side of the road will be for Israelis and one side will be for Palestinians.
“People across the world get nervous when I use the word ‘apartheid’ to describe this situation, but I think it very much describes what’s happening here,” he says.
We have emerged from our gleaming white bus whose skilled driver navigated our untraditional tour route through the twisting hilly roads of East Jerusalem. While on the bus, we make a few pit stops. Micha points out a demolished Palestinian home and clarifies that the Israeli government allots a budget to demolish a certain number of homes per year, recently between 100 and 200 in East Jerusalem, that they deem to be ‘illegal.’ Aerial photos inform government sources of homes that have been built without permits. Building permits, meanwhile, are practically impossible to procure for Palestinians in East Jerusalem, while West Jerusalem is growing so quickly that Micha jokes he used to sit and count how many cranes were in the air at any given time.
When the government locates illegal buildings, they post eviction notices.
Micha explains, “Families have two choices. They can demolish their own homes, which many choose to do. Or they can begin the waiting game. They don’t know if their house will be picked in the lottery. It happens like this; bulldozers roll into neighborhoods while the father is at work and the children are at school. People see the bulldozer and don’t know where it’s going. They begin calling each other, ‘The bulldozer’s here!’ They all leave their homes and follow the bulldozer until it reaches its destination. The police, ten or fifteen in army trucks accompanying the bulldozer, give the mother 15 minutes to pick up what she can…I see children here pick up their biggest toy to bring to school every day, and when I ask them why, they say, ‘Well the boy next door lost all of his toys when they tore down his house and I don’t want to lose my biggest toy.’”
We talk a lot about the Green Line today; the borders that are supposed to separate Israel from the territories according to the 1949 armistice. We learn about Israel’s failure to stick to the Green Line; the Israeli wall, settlements, roadblocks, and checkpoints that Israel continues to build inside Palestinian territory instead, breaking it up into scattered fragments. The persistent attempts to push Palestinians out of Jerusalem through abuse of their civil and human rights, in order to make Jerusalem an “undivided and united city.” Micha talks about personal red lines; the red lines he and his soldier comrades crossed when the IDF inculcated hatred and fear into their attitudes, the inability to rewind to a time before they crossed such lines.
“The first time you see a 10 year old kid in your [gun] sights, you have to sit down and have a drink of water, because, whew! That’s traumatizing. The second time it gets maybe a little easier. The fourth and fifth times, easier still. Until it’s nothing, you’ve seen a thousand kids in your sights before.”
In the space to our right, two Palestinian boys around ten years old fly kites manufactured in the shapes of military aircraft. They are patient with their finicky tools, reminding me of steadfast fishermen.
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Where: Bus #18 to Ramallah
Who: Palestinian-American family and me
“We’re not allowed to fly into Tel Aviv. We traveled from dawn Tuesday to Thursday without stopping because after the long flight we had to have our papers and bags checked by three delegations: the Jordanian delegation, the Israeli delegation, and the Palestinian Authority. We need special permits to go to Jerusalem. We can’t bring our car through the checkpoint because we don’t have yellow plates. It doesn’t matter that we have American passports, because we’re considered residents here.”
Y, the Muslim woman who grew up in Los Angeles and now lives with her husband and four children in Alabama, pauses when her six year old smiles winningly and asks for chocolate. She offers me a butterscotch candy from a zip loc bag and we continue our conversation at the back of Bus #18 to Ramallah.
“My kids ask so many questions. Last time when we got turned away from the checkpoint to go to Jerusalem, they said ‘But why aren’t we going? I thought we could go to the mosque?’ I try to answer them but sometimes I don’t know how to.”
“My daughter was seven years old the last time we came here, now she’s fourteen. Things have changed so much. Freedoms are more and more restricted. It feels like you can’t breathe. “
“I stood on the rooftop of my family’s house and saw how the settlement at the top of the hill is growing and taking over the land of my village. I wish people could see this in the U.S. They only see a tiny amount in the news, and if they come here they only see what the Israelis want them to see. “
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My mental wheels are churning. I am now on the 37th Interfaith Peace-Builders Delegation, where for two weeks we are meeting and traveling with representatives of organizations all over Israel and the Palestinian territories. In a few weeks I will go home, and it will be time to take action, forreals.
-Diary and photos by the talebearer
http://talebearer88.tumblr.com
*For more information about the Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolition, click here http://www.icahd.org/
For more information about Breaking the Silence, click here http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/
For more information about Grassroots Jerusalem, click here http://www.grassrootsjerusalem.org/
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I found the description of the meeting with Micha Kurz both hopeful and distressing -- hopeful because there are people in Israel, in the IDF, who are willing to stand up to the right wing in Israel. Distressing because their experience in the IDF hardens some otherwise decent young people, creates the circumstances that make them feel they have to choose between the survival of their people and the human rights of others. It's a false choice but one often faced by people in the military (I am thinking now of the many young American soldiers who got similarly hardened in Vietnam and of course Iraq and Afghanistan).
The discussion with the family on the bus should bring home to us that being American doesn't protect us from the racial or religious prejudices of people in other countries (or for that matter, people in our own country). To the Israeli authorities, that family was Palestinian first and only nominally American. To some people, some right here on Dkos, I am Jewish first and only nominally American. But like that family, or my family, or Polish Americans, or Irish Americans, or African Americans -- the first term is a descriptor of an ethnic or cultural heritage; one of the best parts of America is the diversity of our ethnic backgrounds. But we are all Americans.