1/16
Final thoughts
Dread and loathing at the airport
Last night I purged my belongings of almost all evidence that I had been on the West Bank or that I had associated with NGOs or dissidents in Israel. I took the battery out of my camera and hid my memory cards and minidisc cassettes in rolls of socks. I emailed myself all the contact information contained in the many cards people had pressed into my hand. I permanently deleted everything I had written with a handy program called file shredder. When I packed, I strategically placed , “Let’s GO Israel!” on top of all my clothes (which smelled suspiciously of the bags of zetar wrapped in my sweaters). The guide to boycotting settlement products and cards from the Al Rowwad Children’s Theater, were on the bottom, concealed in a bag with shoes. I needed to look “clean,” to look like a nice Jewish lady on a nice visit to the nice country of Israel.
The cab driver picked me up at 3:15 am from a lovely Palestinian friend in Ramallah, a graduate student in the US whose father lost his Palestinian ID during a university sojourn in America. My friend has a US passport and is fighting to get a Palestinian West Bank ID which ironically will make it impossible for him to go to Jerusalem or fly out of Ben Gurion airport, but will guarantee his right to return to his home, family, and friends in Ramallah.
The cab driver (who is from East Jerusalem) said we would avoid Kalandia checkpoint where I would be required to get out and go through security, despite his green license plate, and we circle around and sail through Hizma with a quick shalom. He immediately starts advising me what to say. “Do not say you were in Ramallah. I picked you up at the Ambassador Hotel in Jerusalem, you were visiting Jewish friends. Do not say you were in Nablus, Tulkarem, Qalqilyia.” He keeps rehearsing the script with me and at the first security check near the airport I stick to the story. I even name my Jewish friends, (pretty good for 4:00 in the morning).
There are multiple security checks within the airport where I could have tripped and ended up with vigorous questioning, various levels of strip searching, and other aggravations. All my Palestinian friends have had to take their clothes off to get out of Israel. I have often been asked to recite a Hebrew prayer, name my synagogue, list Jewish holidays, etc, etc; what I call the incredibly offensive, “Are you Jewish enough to be trusted?” screening. But I was lucky and I had rehearsed my lines: tourism, visiting friends, volunteering with a medical group, smile my nice Jewish smile and say my respectable Jewish last name. I am sure a few gray hairs worked in my favor as well. The intense racial profiling in this country should at least work in my favor here.
And so it was “no problem,” as Palestinians frequently say in moments of extreme disaster. But I am left wondering, what kind of country requires someone like me to scheme and lie in order to leave without being harassed?
Monday, January 17, 2011
1/14/11 An NGO is not a health care system
Posted by Alice Rothchild:
1/14/11 An NGO is not a health care system
For the second week of the delegation, we divide into different interest groups and the medical folks are based in Nablus, working with Palestinian Medical Relief Society. On the second day we are standing in the waiting area of the Community Based Rehabilitation offices when a staff member, a beautiful somewhat demure woman with large black eyes and a graceful white hijab framing her face, beams and offers us chocolates. I decline, (I am still recovering from breakfast), but she insists. “You must, my father just got out of prison and we are celebrating.” We learn he was imprisoned for four years. I take the chocolate.
A nurse practitioner, another ob-gyn and I spend four days working and observing in PMRS clinics in Qalqilyia, Tulkarem, and Mythaloon (near Jenin). PMRS provides 40% of the health care in the Occupied Territories and as I have previously described, is a major NGO working on empowerment and education issues as well. This experience provides us with the opportunity to work in solidarity with Palestinian colleagues and to bear witness to their lives, as well as to see a very intimate picture of health care and women’s lives in this society.
The daily morning van or car rides involve bumpy travel through stunning scenery, terraced hills, rows of olive trees and other crops, checkpoints that are rarely staffed, and Jewish settlements perched on hills, surrounded by barbed wire, walls, and security apparatus. There are massive USAID road building projects which I am told ironically legitimize the double road system in the West Bank, one for Israelis (Jewish settlers) and this one for Palestinians.
The incredible fragmentation of care between PMRS, the Ministry of Health, UNRWA (for refugees), and the private sector is staggering. Pregnant patients may get free care at an UNRWA clinic, but stop in at PMRS for a prenatal ultrasound. Labs are done at a variety of locations (with variations in quality) so communication and follow up are problematic. Some of the private care that patients reported is best described as creative and unrelated to general medical practice, but clearly lucrative. A 42 year old woman was given a fertility drug to treat abnormal bleeding because her ovaries were “too small.” Bizarre. There is no preventive care outside of pregnancy. Drugs prescribed are often not taken due to cost and lack of insurance. Patients may deliver in an UNRWA hospital, Ministry of Health or private hospital. Fortunately PMRS, in conjunction with a number of other NGOs and organizations, created a prenatal record that each patient carries with her and theoretically contains all her critical information and testing. This is totally dependent on the clinician. They do not get delivery summaries from UNRWA hospitals. There are a variety of protocols for care which seem to be followed differently in each center.
The women all wear hijabs, occasionally their faces are totally covered except for their eyes, and they flip back the cover when they enter the office. The patients sometimes come alone or often with children, a sister, mother, mother-in-law, or husband, and their level of empowerment is reflected in the interactions that even I can understand. For the exam, the relevant body part is revealed and there is a general reluctance to have pelvic exams. There are no clean drapes and the general level of hand washing and office hygiene is fairly third world, and there is minimal privacy. It seems that IUDs are popular for family spacing, with some women also choosing birth control pills. Condoms and withdrawal are also occasionally mentioned. Tubal ligations are forbidden for religious reasons and permission is sometimes sought from the local mufti who usually refuses. In the more rural areas, some women are second or third wives (I am told the maximum is 4, but Bedouins may have more, official and unofficial wives) and this seems to be a complex societal phenomenon, frowned upon by the more educated.
I observe that women are valued primarily as wives and mothers and there is intense social pressure to be married and pregnant, sometimes as young as 15. I am told that a young wife is more easily controlled by her husband and mother-in-law. Then there is the expectation that the woman will produce sons, and if there are daughters, infertility, or multiple miscarriages (which are common as many marry close relatives and have genetic issues), a man may take another wife. I am told that in Hebron, each wife actually chooses the next one. (There seems to be a lack of understanding as to who is really responsible for the gender of the child.) In some areas there is a shortage of available men due to deaths in the Second Intifada and marriage may appear to offer a young woman freedom from her father and her brothers and financial security. Then there are economic reasons for more wives and children, commonly seen in rural agrarian populations. In general the women we see are having large families. To me, the newly married women look very young, often unprepared for sexuality, childbirth, and parenting, but they exist within an enmeshed and involved family system. It seems to be that sometime in their early thirties, women often appear to age rapidly, a combination of many pregnancies and their enormously difficult lives.
The three doctors we work with are very different: one from Rumania, who married a Palestinian when they were both in training, one Palestinian born in Kuwait who spent years getting a Palestinian ID and lived illegally in Tulkarem, one from the area and trained in Jordan. The Rumanian doctor has a gentle caring style and her patients clearly relate well to her. She travels every day from Tulkarem and describes the daily checkpoint feeling of humiliation “like an animal in a cage, I feel like a cow,” as if her soul was branded by this experience. In the past she has waited for hours at these checkpoints, or hiked through orchards to get to work, but lately the checkpoints have been easier. She does antenatal and postnatal care, gynecology, family planning, and treats sexual problems, occasional domestic violence, and bedwetting in children. She is trained by UNRWA to treat children if they come with their mothers. She says that it is very difficult for women in this society to be open about their family problems.
This doctor has lived in Palestine for more than 20 years and arrived as a young wife, totally unprepared to be greeted by the First Intifada and a strict mother-in-law. She was determined to work and described herself as “a kangaroo,” bringing young children to the office and seeing patients and mothering simultaneously. She has three children: a doctor son in London, a doctor son in Egypt, and a daughter studying architecture in Tulkarem. She talks about Palestinian men’s “stupid proudness.” She has a Palestinian ID and has retained her Rumanian passport, “my only chance for freedom.” She also works with her gynecologist husband in a private clinic in Tulkarem. There is a wistfulness in her voice, a sense of pain, frustration, resignation, and perhaps a profound ambivalence about the life choices she has made and the patriarchal society in which she has found herself. She talks about her “Romeo and Juliette” experience in Rumania as a young woman. She keeps shaking her head and reiterating that her family comes first and that she has done everything for her children.
I have described the other two doctors more extensively in my book, Broken Promises, Broken Dreams.
The first two women do more listening and explaining, the third is very business-like and sees a large volume of patients efficiently. They are all dedicated and hardworking and have faced many struggles as working mothers. The style of medicine is this strange combination of first and third world with the restrictions of occupation and poverty added to the mix. I learn that much that I am seeing is called the “syndromic approach,” developed by WHO for resource poor areas. Nonetheless, I find it somewhat bewildering that almost every woman receives and expects an ultrasound exam, (very first world), but there are none of the very inexpensive materials needed to correctly diagnose vaginal infections. Basically the recommendation is to treat for everything that is likely and if that doesn’t work, to do a “high vaginal swab.” I wonder what the risks are of such an overuse of antibiotics, suspect that it would be cost effective to diagnose and treat more accurately, and I still do not understand the high vaginal swab concept. Clearly coming from the first world, I am trained in evidence-based medicine whenever possible, quality improvement programs, and closer monitoring and training, which clearly are not possible here.
We learn that breast cancer is common amongst Palestinian women and is seen in women sometimes in their 20s. Good statistics are nonexistent. Because there is no preventive care, diagnosis usually occurs when the disease is advanced, and mastectomy is done most commonly. There is no radiation treatment available in the West Bank as the Israeli government does not allow radioactive medical materials to enter the region, another example of health care being highjacked by the occupation. Treatment is hard to get in Israel and expensive in Jordan. Chemotherapy is available but there are limited supplies and frequent shortages. Five months ago USAID brought in a mobile digital mammography van which is supposed to do widespread screening. I am told that there have been problems with patients getting their results and it is unclear how successful this program is, although it is promising. The Ministry of Health is also developing mammography programs in the major cities.
One of the most uplifting experiences is meeting with two health workers. These women seem feisty, savvy, and well trained; their job is to make home visits and do family care, addressing both physical as well as mental health needs. One who describes herself as a political activist, smiles and says, “The women are ruling these days.” The other talks about how she has to build a relationship with the family in order to understand their issues. She describes a young boy who developed bedwetting, personality changes, phobias and stuttering when his home was invaded twice by the IDF when they arrested two of his older brothers. She mentions a case where a young boy was sexually abused by a 15 year old cousin, and a big problem with crystal meth in Qalqilyia. She has had success in treating all of these patients.
We leave the clinic in Tulkarem and decide to have lunch in a local restaurant that looks like a cave with a huge mosaic/three dimensional clay relief of the Old city. There is a large family enjoying themselves in the restaurant as well. When we are finished, one of the men comes up to us and asks if we are from Machsom Watch, the Israeli women who monitor checkpoints. We explain what we have been doing and he explains that he is a member of the Bereaved Parents Circle, Jews and Palestinians who have lost family to violence and who come together to heal personally and within their own communities, educating about the need to end violence. Despite our protestations, he insists on paying for our meal, thanking us for caring about Palestine, bearing witness and hopefully making the lives of invisible people more visible to the international community.
1/14/11 An NGO is not a health care system
For the second week of the delegation, we divide into different interest groups and the medical folks are based in Nablus, working with Palestinian Medical Relief Society. On the second day we are standing in the waiting area of the Community Based Rehabilitation offices when a staff member, a beautiful somewhat demure woman with large black eyes and a graceful white hijab framing her face, beams and offers us chocolates. I decline, (I am still recovering from breakfast), but she insists. “You must, my father just got out of prison and we are celebrating.” We learn he was imprisoned for four years. I take the chocolate.
A nurse practitioner, another ob-gyn and I spend four days working and observing in PMRS clinics in Qalqilyia, Tulkarem, and Mythaloon (near Jenin). PMRS provides 40% of the health care in the Occupied Territories and as I have previously described, is a major NGO working on empowerment and education issues as well. This experience provides us with the opportunity to work in solidarity with Palestinian colleagues and to bear witness to their lives, as well as to see a very intimate picture of health care and women’s lives in this society.
The daily morning van or car rides involve bumpy travel through stunning scenery, terraced hills, rows of olive trees and other crops, checkpoints that are rarely staffed, and Jewish settlements perched on hills, surrounded by barbed wire, walls, and security apparatus. There are massive USAID road building projects which I am told ironically legitimize the double road system in the West Bank, one for Israelis (Jewish settlers) and this one for Palestinians.
The incredible fragmentation of care between PMRS, the Ministry of Health, UNRWA (for refugees), and the private sector is staggering. Pregnant patients may get free care at an UNRWA clinic, but stop in at PMRS for a prenatal ultrasound. Labs are done at a variety of locations (with variations in quality) so communication and follow up are problematic. Some of the private care that patients reported is best described as creative and unrelated to general medical practice, but clearly lucrative. A 42 year old woman was given a fertility drug to treat abnormal bleeding because her ovaries were “too small.” Bizarre. There is no preventive care outside of pregnancy. Drugs prescribed are often not taken due to cost and lack of insurance. Patients may deliver in an UNRWA hospital, Ministry of Health or private hospital. Fortunately PMRS, in conjunction with a number of other NGOs and organizations, created a prenatal record that each patient carries with her and theoretically contains all her critical information and testing. This is totally dependent on the clinician. They do not get delivery summaries from UNRWA hospitals. There are a variety of protocols for care which seem to be followed differently in each center.
The women all wear hijabs, occasionally their faces are totally covered except for their eyes, and they flip back the cover when they enter the office. The patients sometimes come alone or often with children, a sister, mother, mother-in-law, or husband, and their level of empowerment is reflected in the interactions that even I can understand. For the exam, the relevant body part is revealed and there is a general reluctance to have pelvic exams. There are no clean drapes and the general level of hand washing and office hygiene is fairly third world, and there is minimal privacy. It seems that IUDs are popular for family spacing, with some women also choosing birth control pills. Condoms and withdrawal are also occasionally mentioned. Tubal ligations are forbidden for religious reasons and permission is sometimes sought from the local mufti who usually refuses. In the more rural areas, some women are second or third wives (I am told the maximum is 4, but Bedouins may have more, official and unofficial wives) and this seems to be a complex societal phenomenon, frowned upon by the more educated.
I observe that women are valued primarily as wives and mothers and there is intense social pressure to be married and pregnant, sometimes as young as 15. I am told that a young wife is more easily controlled by her husband and mother-in-law. Then there is the expectation that the woman will produce sons, and if there are daughters, infertility, or multiple miscarriages (which are common as many marry close relatives and have genetic issues), a man may take another wife. I am told that in Hebron, each wife actually chooses the next one. (There seems to be a lack of understanding as to who is really responsible for the gender of the child.) In some areas there is a shortage of available men due to deaths in the Second Intifada and marriage may appear to offer a young woman freedom from her father and her brothers and financial security. Then there are economic reasons for more wives and children, commonly seen in rural agrarian populations. In general the women we see are having large families. To me, the newly married women look very young, often unprepared for sexuality, childbirth, and parenting, but they exist within an enmeshed and involved family system. It seems to be that sometime in their early thirties, women often appear to age rapidly, a combination of many pregnancies and their enormously difficult lives.
The three doctors we work with are very different: one from Rumania, who married a Palestinian when they were both in training, one Palestinian born in Kuwait who spent years getting a Palestinian ID and lived illegally in Tulkarem, one from the area and trained in Jordan. The Rumanian doctor has a gentle caring style and her patients clearly relate well to her. She travels every day from Tulkarem and describes the daily checkpoint feeling of humiliation “like an animal in a cage, I feel like a cow,” as if her soul was branded by this experience. In the past she has waited for hours at these checkpoints, or hiked through orchards to get to work, but lately the checkpoints have been easier. She does antenatal and postnatal care, gynecology, family planning, and treats sexual problems, occasional domestic violence, and bedwetting in children. She is trained by UNRWA to treat children if they come with their mothers. She says that it is very difficult for women in this society to be open about their family problems.
This doctor has lived in Palestine for more than 20 years and arrived as a young wife, totally unprepared to be greeted by the First Intifada and a strict mother-in-law. She was determined to work and described herself as “a kangaroo,” bringing young children to the office and seeing patients and mothering simultaneously. She has three children: a doctor son in London, a doctor son in Egypt, and a daughter studying architecture in Tulkarem. She talks about Palestinian men’s “stupid proudness.” She has a Palestinian ID and has retained her Rumanian passport, “my only chance for freedom.” She also works with her gynecologist husband in a private clinic in Tulkarem. There is a wistfulness in her voice, a sense of pain, frustration, resignation, and perhaps a profound ambivalence about the life choices she has made and the patriarchal society in which she has found herself. She talks about her “Romeo and Juliette” experience in Rumania as a young woman. She keeps shaking her head and reiterating that her family comes first and that she has done everything for her children.
I have described the other two doctors more extensively in my book, Broken Promises, Broken Dreams.
The first two women do more listening and explaining, the third is very business-like and sees a large volume of patients efficiently. They are all dedicated and hardworking and have faced many struggles as working mothers. The style of medicine is this strange combination of first and third world with the restrictions of occupation and poverty added to the mix. I learn that much that I am seeing is called the “syndromic approach,” developed by WHO for resource poor areas. Nonetheless, I find it somewhat bewildering that almost every woman receives and expects an ultrasound exam, (very first world), but there are none of the very inexpensive materials needed to correctly diagnose vaginal infections. Basically the recommendation is to treat for everything that is likely and if that doesn’t work, to do a “high vaginal swab.” I wonder what the risks are of such an overuse of antibiotics, suspect that it would be cost effective to diagnose and treat more accurately, and I still do not understand the high vaginal swab concept. Clearly coming from the first world, I am trained in evidence-based medicine whenever possible, quality improvement programs, and closer monitoring and training, which clearly are not possible here.
We learn that breast cancer is common amongst Palestinian women and is seen in women sometimes in their 20s. Good statistics are nonexistent. Because there is no preventive care, diagnosis usually occurs when the disease is advanced, and mastectomy is done most commonly. There is no radiation treatment available in the West Bank as the Israeli government does not allow radioactive medical materials to enter the region, another example of health care being highjacked by the occupation. Treatment is hard to get in Israel and expensive in Jordan. Chemotherapy is available but there are limited supplies and frequent shortages. Five months ago USAID brought in a mobile digital mammography van which is supposed to do widespread screening. I am told that there have been problems with patients getting their results and it is unclear how successful this program is, although it is promising. The Ministry of Health is also developing mammography programs in the major cities.
One of the most uplifting experiences is meeting with two health workers. These women seem feisty, savvy, and well trained; their job is to make home visits and do family care, addressing both physical as well as mental health needs. One who describes herself as a political activist, smiles and says, “The women are ruling these days.” The other talks about how she has to build a relationship with the family in order to understand their issues. She describes a young boy who developed bedwetting, personality changes, phobias and stuttering when his home was invaded twice by the IDF when they arrested two of his older brothers. She mentions a case where a young boy was sexually abused by a 15 year old cousin, and a big problem with crystal meth in Qalqilyia. She has had success in treating all of these patients.
We leave the clinic in Tulkarem and decide to have lunch in a local restaurant that looks like a cave with a huge mosaic/three dimensional clay relief of the Old city. There is a large family enjoying themselves in the restaurant as well. When we are finished, one of the men comes up to us and asks if we are from Machsom Watch, the Israeli women who monitor checkpoints. We explain what we have been doing and he explains that he is a member of the Bereaved Parents Circle, Jews and Palestinians who have lost family to violence and who come together to heal personally and within their own communities, educating about the need to end violence. Despite our protestations, he insists on paying for our meal, thanking us for caring about Palestine, bearing witness and hopefully making the lives of invisible people more visible to the international community.
1/15 My last quiet day
Posted by Alice Rothchild:
1/15 My last quiet day
I thought my last day in Ramallah would be a reflective, low key day to catch up, finish blogging, look at my 700+ emails, and pack, when my host asks me to join him and the US student he is mentoring on an extraordinary visit to the village of Al Walajeh near Bethlehem. Soon we are in a taxi hurtling along Wadi El Nar Road, with hair-raising rollercoaster curves and more USAID road building projects. My friend reflects on the changes underway in the West Bank: in particular a huge NGO, donor, and governmental focus on security. I have noticed the PA forces in their fresh new uniforms standing on many corners. He tells me that under the guise of “law and order, justice, and building prisons,” there is now one Palestinian policeman, security agent, or intelligence officer for every 50 West Bankers. Prime Minister Fayyad, the World Bank trained technocrat, is getting everything under control. During Eid this year, my friend reports that every kid wanted a plastic gun, wanted to be powerful.
The village of Al Walajeh originally was 17,000 dunams in size. In 1948, the location of the Green Line split off 11,000 dunams for Israel. The settlement of Gilo took 152, and more has been seized for the expansion of Har Gilo and the separation wall which is being constructed through the village, leaving 2800 dunams for the original Palestinians. The local villagers had given land to a convent and when the placement of the wall was announced, the nuns did not protest and are now on the Israeli side, living on their donated land. We arrive at the home of a woman I will call Suha, her house perched on the edge of a rocky road, the separation wall under construction across the street.
Suha is spunky, energetic, smart, went to Najah University and holds a masters degree in peace and development and another masters in human rights. She was working for the UN on gender, race, and violence in Sudan, and is currently between jobs and working at the local children’s Ansar Center. The student wants to talk with her about justice and the right of return.
Suha tells us her family story while pouring tea and stuffing us with delicious spinach pies. After news of the Deir Yassin massacre which occurred close to this village, in 1947 the women and children went to Jericho for safety. Gradually they trickled back to the village, but then war broke out, they are forced to leave again and went back to Jericho, spending six months in the Alarroub Refugee Camp. She describes her grandmother as a “wild spirit” who married reluctantly at the age of 28 as a last resort. The grandmother left the refugee camp and returned back to the village which is mostly rocky uncultivated land used for sheep. After 1948 the family lived in a cave down in the valley for 12 years. Then her mother, another free spirited woman, decided to take her children to family in Jerusalem, renting a house in Beit Jala so the children could get a good education. In 1961, the grandfather started building two houses in the village for his two sons. During the 1967 war the family fled back to the cave as the adjacent land was a Jordanian army station.
During this conversation, cherubic young nieces and nephews keep popping in with their plastic back packs, looking for hugs and then running out. Suha explains that like all of her village, she has refugee status, but she also has a Jerusalem ID, and her Israeli travel document states that she is Jordanian. She is at risk of losing her Jerusalem ID by living in the village, but she uses her father’s and brother’s addresses in the Shafat Refugee Camp. As an unmarried woman who is not demanding any services, she is pretty invisible to the authorities.
So on to the question of justice. Suha explains that there is a word in Arabic that means: justice is purely give me what is mine at any cost, justice is undoing the injustice even if that means creating an injustice to someone who had nothing to do with the original offense. In this context, she argues that there is an individual and collective right of return for Palestinians and that what she does with that right is her problem. Having the right does not necessarily mean exercising it, “I do not think we can undo Israel but Israel does not have the right to exist on Palestinian land. They gained the right by the fact that they exist.”
She moves on to the question of compensation which she sees as not only payment for seized land, but also payment for suffering, both individual and collective. She states that Israelis used Palestinians for construction projects like the port of Haifa, that the British took Palestinian gold when they left. There are lots of questions that need to be addressed.
She continues saying, “There is an Israeli state. I do not want to fight all these fights and then be an Israeli.” She points out that Palestine does not exist on any official national or international form. “I want to exist.” She adds that symbolic gestures are important and that Israeli acknowledgement of the Nakba and the creation of the refugee crisis are critical. “Jews invented this concept. What applies to you, applies to us.” She is not sure an apology actually matters, “I don’t know if I will accept an apology.”
Suha says that she never lost a relative in the conflict, but she lost 12 friends in the Second Intifada. She describes the pain of erasing their numbers from her phone and her inability to attend their funerals because of lack of permits. “What is not natural is our daily life. I do not want to live this life.” She wants to be working on legislation, women’s rights, or just watching TV, but she cannot even decide where she will go tomorrow, if she can keep an appointment. “This is what I can’t forgive. I couldn’t study law, so Israel decided my life…I don’t think I can forgive for that. I even gained weight because of them,” she adds laughing. “If I am sad and angry, I need sugar. They made me angry all my life.”
Suha has thought extensively on how to actualize the right of return. She states that refugees need to be offered options and they need to be in control of the decision making. Firstly, “You are allowed to go back and you can get compensation.” She thinks this would be a gradual process, maybe 20,000 allowed per year on some time schedule. Those who choose to stay where they currently are would get more money. Those who choose to move to a different country would get less. She adds poignantly, “Coming back is another leaving.” Clearly she is thinking of a comprehensive and regional solution. She also explains that nobody wants to be a fighter all their lives, “This is burden.” She believes that the number who would choose to return would be minimal, mostly those who are fighters or people with deep emotional attachments to what they had, and experimental types who want to try it and will probably leave. This was also documented in research done by the Khalil Shikaki Center in approximately 2005. She feels that living in Israel will be too problematic for most Palestinians given the racism and economic hardship. People in refugee camps will most likely want to go to a better place like Canada or Australia. “Palestinians are exhausted.”
This solution needs to be funded by those who are responsible: Israel, the British, and the international community. She also blames the Palestinian leadership who have failed the refugees miserably. She thinks that the refugees themselves should come up with meaningful solutions, present these to the international community, and step out of the victim role. “We are lucky that Jews are news. Otherwise we would have been dead a long time ago.”
Suha also points out an interesting possibility for Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. She explains that in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrar, the Israeli courts have established the precedent that a Jewish family can claim ownership of a house bought in the 1920s (many claim the documents are bogus) and throw out the current inhabitants. She proposes that Palestinians with Israeli citizenship use this precedent and go after their stolen property.
The interview is over and I am filled with more questions, but instead we discuss which checkpoints we can pass through, apparently some are not open to people with foreign passports, (another one of those weird unexpected quirks). Back in the cab, my friend continues the conversation about the new Palestinian security forces. Apparently Palestinian police working in Area A (Palestinian control) have to cover their flashing lights if they have to travel through Area B (“joint” control) to another Area A and get a permit from the Israeli DCO, thus the police are effectively emasculated by their occupiers. It seems that Fayyad is busy building a pretend state. As my friend explains, the prisoners are polishing their beds and folding their clothes, but they are still in prison.
Passing the Jalazon Refugee Camp and an UNRWA school on the left, we end up in a wealthy village outside Ramallah where Palestinians who emigrated to the US and did very well have come back and built huge Disneyland mansions. We are invited to a “barbeque” where a staff of four has prepared a magnificent and generous meal. I count five living rooms and one elevator but never got an official tour. I look out across the family land to the imposing Jewish settlement in direct view. I am told that the family has good relations with the settlers, they pay them to leave them alone.
1/15 My last quiet day
I thought my last day in Ramallah would be a reflective, low key day to catch up, finish blogging, look at my 700+ emails, and pack, when my host asks me to join him and the US student he is mentoring on an extraordinary visit to the village of Al Walajeh near Bethlehem. Soon we are in a taxi hurtling along Wadi El Nar Road, with hair-raising rollercoaster curves and more USAID road building projects. My friend reflects on the changes underway in the West Bank: in particular a huge NGO, donor, and governmental focus on security. I have noticed the PA forces in their fresh new uniforms standing on many corners. He tells me that under the guise of “law and order, justice, and building prisons,” there is now one Palestinian policeman, security agent, or intelligence officer for every 50 West Bankers. Prime Minister Fayyad, the World Bank trained technocrat, is getting everything under control. During Eid this year, my friend reports that every kid wanted a plastic gun, wanted to be powerful.
The village of Al Walajeh originally was 17,000 dunams in size. In 1948, the location of the Green Line split off 11,000 dunams for Israel. The settlement of Gilo took 152, and more has been seized for the expansion of Har Gilo and the separation wall which is being constructed through the village, leaving 2800 dunams for the original Palestinians. The local villagers had given land to a convent and when the placement of the wall was announced, the nuns did not protest and are now on the Israeli side, living on their donated land. We arrive at the home of a woman I will call Suha, her house perched on the edge of a rocky road, the separation wall under construction across the street.
Suha is spunky, energetic, smart, went to Najah University and holds a masters degree in peace and development and another masters in human rights. She was working for the UN on gender, race, and violence in Sudan, and is currently between jobs and working at the local children’s Ansar Center. The student wants to talk with her about justice and the right of return.
Suha tells us her family story while pouring tea and stuffing us with delicious spinach pies. After news of the Deir Yassin massacre which occurred close to this village, in 1947 the women and children went to Jericho for safety. Gradually they trickled back to the village, but then war broke out, they are forced to leave again and went back to Jericho, spending six months in the Alarroub Refugee Camp. She describes her grandmother as a “wild spirit” who married reluctantly at the age of 28 as a last resort. The grandmother left the refugee camp and returned back to the village which is mostly rocky uncultivated land used for sheep. After 1948 the family lived in a cave down in the valley for 12 years. Then her mother, another free spirited woman, decided to take her children to family in Jerusalem, renting a house in Beit Jala so the children could get a good education. In 1961, the grandfather started building two houses in the village for his two sons. During the 1967 war the family fled back to the cave as the adjacent land was a Jordanian army station.
During this conversation, cherubic young nieces and nephews keep popping in with their plastic back packs, looking for hugs and then running out. Suha explains that like all of her village, she has refugee status, but she also has a Jerusalem ID, and her Israeli travel document states that she is Jordanian. She is at risk of losing her Jerusalem ID by living in the village, but she uses her father’s and brother’s addresses in the Shafat Refugee Camp. As an unmarried woman who is not demanding any services, she is pretty invisible to the authorities.
So on to the question of justice. Suha explains that there is a word in Arabic that means: justice is purely give me what is mine at any cost, justice is undoing the injustice even if that means creating an injustice to someone who had nothing to do with the original offense. In this context, she argues that there is an individual and collective right of return for Palestinians and that what she does with that right is her problem. Having the right does not necessarily mean exercising it, “I do not think we can undo Israel but Israel does not have the right to exist on Palestinian land. They gained the right by the fact that they exist.”
She moves on to the question of compensation which she sees as not only payment for seized land, but also payment for suffering, both individual and collective. She states that Israelis used Palestinians for construction projects like the port of Haifa, that the British took Palestinian gold when they left. There are lots of questions that need to be addressed.
She continues saying, “There is an Israeli state. I do not want to fight all these fights and then be an Israeli.” She points out that Palestine does not exist on any official national or international form. “I want to exist.” She adds that symbolic gestures are important and that Israeli acknowledgement of the Nakba and the creation of the refugee crisis are critical. “Jews invented this concept. What applies to you, applies to us.” She is not sure an apology actually matters, “I don’t know if I will accept an apology.”
Suha says that she never lost a relative in the conflict, but she lost 12 friends in the Second Intifada. She describes the pain of erasing their numbers from her phone and her inability to attend their funerals because of lack of permits. “What is not natural is our daily life. I do not want to live this life.” She wants to be working on legislation, women’s rights, or just watching TV, but she cannot even decide where she will go tomorrow, if she can keep an appointment. “This is what I can’t forgive. I couldn’t study law, so Israel decided my life…I don’t think I can forgive for that. I even gained weight because of them,” she adds laughing. “If I am sad and angry, I need sugar. They made me angry all my life.”
Suha has thought extensively on how to actualize the right of return. She states that refugees need to be offered options and they need to be in control of the decision making. Firstly, “You are allowed to go back and you can get compensation.” She thinks this would be a gradual process, maybe 20,000 allowed per year on some time schedule. Those who choose to stay where they currently are would get more money. Those who choose to move to a different country would get less. She adds poignantly, “Coming back is another leaving.” Clearly she is thinking of a comprehensive and regional solution. She also explains that nobody wants to be a fighter all their lives, “This is burden.” She believes that the number who would choose to return would be minimal, mostly those who are fighters or people with deep emotional attachments to what they had, and experimental types who want to try it and will probably leave. This was also documented in research done by the Khalil Shikaki Center in approximately 2005. She feels that living in Israel will be too problematic for most Palestinians given the racism and economic hardship. People in refugee camps will most likely want to go to a better place like Canada or Australia. “Palestinians are exhausted.”
This solution needs to be funded by those who are responsible: Israel, the British, and the international community. She also blames the Palestinian leadership who have failed the refugees miserably. She thinks that the refugees themselves should come up with meaningful solutions, present these to the international community, and step out of the victim role. “We are lucky that Jews are news. Otherwise we would have been dead a long time ago.”
Suha also points out an interesting possibility for Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. She explains that in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrar, the Israeli courts have established the precedent that a Jewish family can claim ownership of a house bought in the 1920s (many claim the documents are bogus) and throw out the current inhabitants. She proposes that Palestinians with Israeli citizenship use this precedent and go after their stolen property.
The interview is over and I am filled with more questions, but instead we discuss which checkpoints we can pass through, apparently some are not open to people with foreign passports, (another one of those weird unexpected quirks). Back in the cab, my friend continues the conversation about the new Palestinian security forces. Apparently Palestinian police working in Area A (Palestinian control) have to cover their flashing lights if they have to travel through Area B (“joint” control) to another Area A and get a permit from the Israeli DCO, thus the police are effectively emasculated by their occupiers. It seems that Fayyad is busy building a pretend state. As my friend explains, the prisoners are polishing their beds and folding their clothes, but they are still in prison.
Passing the Jalazon Refugee Camp and an UNRWA school on the left, we end up in a wealthy village outside Ramallah where Palestinians who emigrated to the US and did very well have come back and built huge Disneyland mansions. We are invited to a “barbeque” where a staff of four has prepared a magnificent and generous meal. I count five living rooms and one elevator but never got an official tour. I look out across the family land to the imposing Jewish settlement in direct view. I am told that the family has good relations with the settlers, they pay them to leave them alone.
Friday, January 14, 2011
The Day After Zionism
The Day After Zionism
January 12, 2011
As we trudge through the terraced land, ducking under branches of olive trees and trying to avoid prickly bushes, I think about landscape, consciousness, and memory. We are walking through the land because Israeli soldiers are blocking the road ahead. They are blocking the road ahead so as not to allow people to arrive in the Palestinian village of Bil’in. We are going to Bil’in in order to protest the confiscation of the village’s land for settlement and wall construction. At Bil’in’s demonstration a week earlier, 36-year-old Jawaher Abu Rahme inhaled a lethal dose of tear gas. Her brother Bassem was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier at a protest in the village just under two years ago.
So we traipse through the olive groves, only slightly out of view of the soldiers on the road, and a line by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish comes to mind: “If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears.” Bil’in has become a battleground, the surrounding landscape a stage for a risky game of cat and mouse. What kind of consciousness does the land have? What would it say if it could? The wall is often described as a scar through Palestine, but right now it is more of a fresh wound. When the wall falls, will the scar left be permanent?
Two days before this protest, our group wakes up at the Yafa Cultural Center in Balata refugee camp, Nablus. We eat breakfast, thank our hosts, and get in a bus with the right color license plate, driven by a driver with the right color ID card, and head towards the city of Yafa. The Yafa Cultural Center is thus named because the vast majority of people living in Balata refugee camp come originally from Yafa and the surrounding area. Most of these people have never seen their original villages, or have not been back since their displacement in 1948. I am hesitant to tell our hosts where we are going, knowing that my visit to Yafa – and their inability to join us – is emblematic of the injustice I try so hard to fight.
On the way, we encounter another fresh wound / scar-to-be. We have split into two vehicles, and I am driving a small rental car with two Palestinian women from the West Bank, and two of our whiter and blonder American group members. When we see the checkpoint ahead, we take a deep breath, but we have no reason to believe this will be any different than the many other times I have used my undeserved privilege to “smuggle” Palestinians into parts of their own country that they are not allowed to visit. But this time is different. A soldier or security guard (it’s hard to tell the difference these days) signals for us to stop, and my trick of waving and continuing to drive is thwarted by a new metal bar that the soldiers operate. It looks like a toll booth, only the highway employees are armed and the context much more insidious. When she asks for our passports, we stumble a bit before saying we left them in a hotel in Tel Aviv. We say we are five American tourists. She is skeptical.
We are ordered to pull over and get out of the car. It continues from there: questioning, searching, rapid fire questions to the two Palestinian women about their names, their parents’ names, where they are from, whether they speak any languages other than English. It is maddening and terrifying, and I am standing there wishing we had prepared better, wishing my privilege-driven arrogance – which is often what helps me get through checkpoints – had been mitigated at least enough for us to have had a plan, a story, a mindset that might help us get through this. We tell the guard we had been in the Israeli settlement of Ariel, visiting a friend. I am making it up as I go along. She wants my friend’s name and phone number. I quickly call an old Israeli friend who doesn’t even know I’m in the country. He is surprised and happy to hear from me and asks, “When did you get here?” “There’s a security guard here who wants to talk to you about our visit to your house in Ariel,” I say. “I don’t live in Ariel,” he says, confused. “We’re at the checkpoint on our way from your place to Tel Aviv,” I respond. He catches on.
At this point I’m only trying to get us out of here, not even to get through, but with every question from the guards/soldiers, our story has more and more holes. Finally we talk our way out of the situation and are allowed to “return” to Ariel (where we have not been). Hearts are pounding. I am feeling guilty for my arrogance, and my Palestinian friends are feeling humiliated. They are not entirely surprised by the way they have been treated, but are deeply upset at the degree to which it has affected them.
We drive south, towards another checkpoint that is easier to get through, and I think about how much pain and injustice a people and a place can hold. None of us share exactly what we are feeling – probably none of us are able – but we make a tentative plan for the next checkpoint. We drive through without stopping, and have a small celebration in the car. But we feel uneasy. We are still nervous about being caught. My friend who would at this point usually take off her hat and put back on her head scarf does not do so quite yet. We feel the occupation in our bodies, in our minds. I am not experiencing anything close to what my Palestinian friends are, yet my visceral reaction offers a fragment of understanding of how this system is able to function.
We arrive in Yafa and go first to the sea. One friend has not seen it since she was a child – except as a reminder from the hills of Nablus on a clear day – and her eyes immediately fill with tears. She thanks me. I am speechless. The last thing I want at that moment is to be thanked for bringing a friend to her own land.
As we walk around Yafa and Tel Aviv, I am struck by a sense of permanence. Although I know that the Jewish presence in this city is only a hundred years in the making, while the Palestinian presence is thousands of years deep, it is hard now to imagine the undoing or even the transformation of this place. There are other parts of the country in which it is hard to imagine the continuation of an exclusively Jewish state, but in Tel Aviv, I often feel an overwhelming sense of the opposite.
A couple days ago I was talking with an Israeli friend who works with Zochrot. The organization raises awareness about the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic) of 1948. They visit destroyed villages and place signs there with the villages’ original names; organize art exhibits and lectures; facilitate workshops for school children; and engage in other activities to affect the Israeli collective memory. My friend was telling me that he will soon start to focus even more on outreach to the Israeli public. A few minutes later the topic turned to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He excitedly told me that he has hope in this movement, that it’s clear from his perspective that the international movement is growing, and that only pressure from the outside can change the reality on the ground. “Then why do you want to focus more on the Israeli public?” I asked. He thought for a minute, and then responded: “My work is not going to have an immediate effect on the political situation here. What I’m doing is preparing for the day after Zionism.”
1/6 Who profits from the occupation?
1/6 Who profits from the occupation?
As we learn more about the BDS movement, a critical question emerges: what companies are involved with which activities that ultimately sustain the occupation? In Tel Aviv we meet Dalit Baum, an Israeli member of the Coalition of Women for Peace and specifically, the group Who Profits? She explains that the organization was developed to understand the economics of the settlement project. A short haired woman with intense black eyes and an ironic sense of humor, she states that the project aimed to investigate corporations directly involved in the occupation, to figure out the specifics, the financial interests, and who is making money from whom. After meticulous research, four years later they have a website, whoprofits.org, that has a partial data base listing approximately 1000 companies.
The criteria for inclusion on this list involves work in building settlements, marketing settlement goods, using industrial space within settlements, providing crucial services to settlements such as transportation, and providing equipment to the military such as for building walls and checkpoints. She notes that Israel has exploited the Palestinian labor pool and the Palestinian market, it is a captive market where Israeli policies have shut down much of the competition. For example, Palestinians are only allowed to grow agricultural products that are not as profitable as Israeli products and do not compete in European markets when compared to Israeli goods.
Who Profits is a unique grassroots organization that does impeccable economic research with careful documentation using concrete proof with governmental and company documents. They are very careful to stay within the letter of the law, as any suit for damages would be disastrous in the Israeli courts. An example of their work involves “Crossing the Line,” a fast train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem that crosses the Green Line into the West Bank in two sections. The Israeli neighbors did not want the train and noise near their property so the project was moved and this will entail almost the entire destruction of the Palestinian village of Beit Iksa. Painfully there is now a petition to the world from the Palestinian village to put the train on land that is ALREADY expropriated. The train is being built by European and American companies.
Then there is the issue of financing of the occupation. All six Israeli banks are directly involved in supporting settlements. Dalit reminds us that you cannot separate the economy of the occupation from the economy of Israel from the economy of the US for that matter. For instance, Soda Stream, an Israeli company that makes carbonated water, just went public on Nasdaq.
She turns her attention to what does it mean to boycott settlement markets. She describes 18 tycoons that control the large corporations that are involved and notes that if they start losing money, they will pull out of the settlements. She describes living in Israel both as frustrating but “We feel effective.” As an example, her group will go to a checkpoint, they will document the infrastructure, the telecommunications, etc, and then google the companies, do the appropriate research, and put the information on the website. “Direct action with no gas! We use our privilege to see the occupation.” They also go to security industry exhibitions and meet with people eager to sell a host of weaponry. She focuses on crowd dispersal, what is called in the business, “nonlethal weapons” although everyone knows that these weapons can be lethal in high enough doses or with direct impact. For her she feels this is personal, as an activist who has been faced with tear gas and other methods used at demonstrations.
Another aspect of this macabre business Dalit describes is weaponry produced in the US. Because the US gives Israel an enormous amount of money to buy American military equipment, there are now Israeli entrepreneurs who establish companies in the US and then benefit from the largesse of our tax dollars. Thus there are many forces within the US that have strong economic interests in maintaining this lucrative arrangement where the US is basically financing its own war industries. This lead a group of activists, after a demonstration, to return empty tear gas canisters to the US ambassador. They were promptly arrested for possession of weapons, but the charges were later dropped.
Dalit reminds us that there is a lot to be done in the US and any effort contributes to the cause. It is important to pick strategic targets that also involve an educational component. She feels boycotting computer companies or generic drug companies, for instance, are not strategic activities. She is very optimistic, both because this movement is lead by Palestinian activists and because there is a response in the Israeli Knesset that implies that people in power are worried. The Anti BDS law in process will make individuals personally liable for any damage to companies. The Association Law aims to outlaw any NGO that provides information to foreign entities that might lead to charges of war crimes against Israelis. The Fighting Terrorism Law targets any Israeli or Palestinian activist who does any activity against Israeli soldiers or State symbols, and vaguely and obscurely defines all of these activities as terrorism. This could include nonviolent, legitimate resistance to the occupation. The Prohibition on Instituting Boycott Law will criminalize Israeli citizens who support local and international BDS activities. Recently the Knesset began an investigation of the funding of NGOs.
Dalit sees these rightwing trends as plunging into fascism and of particular concern is that these anti-democratic assaults are originating in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, which is supposed to be the cornerstone of a democratic society.
I leave this meeting with the sense that there is a tremendous amount of work to be done in the US which is actively enmeshed with the military machinery and corporations that make the Israeli occupation possible. In addition, the “only democracy in the Middle East” seems to be heading rapidly in an dangerous direction; I wonder how many “Israel right or wrong” supporters fully appreciate this and when will supporting the actions of the Israeli government become untenable to a wider group of people. I am impressed that a small group of thoughtful and dedicated activists can have such a significant impact on the process. I only hope that the next time I visit Israel, I will not be visiting them in prison.
As we learn more about the BDS movement, a critical question emerges: what companies are involved with which activities that ultimately sustain the occupation? In Tel Aviv we meet Dalit Baum, an Israeli member of the Coalition of Women for Peace and specifically, the group Who Profits? She explains that the organization was developed to understand the economics of the settlement project. A short haired woman with intense black eyes and an ironic sense of humor, she states that the project aimed to investigate corporations directly involved in the occupation, to figure out the specifics, the financial interests, and who is making money from whom. After meticulous research, four years later they have a website, whoprofits.org, that has a partial data base listing approximately 1000 companies.
The criteria for inclusion on this list involves work in building settlements, marketing settlement goods, using industrial space within settlements, providing crucial services to settlements such as transportation, and providing equipment to the military such as for building walls and checkpoints. She notes that Israel has exploited the Palestinian labor pool and the Palestinian market, it is a captive market where Israeli policies have shut down much of the competition. For example, Palestinians are only allowed to grow agricultural products that are not as profitable as Israeli products and do not compete in European markets when compared to Israeli goods.
Who Profits is a unique grassroots organization that does impeccable economic research with careful documentation using concrete proof with governmental and company documents. They are very careful to stay within the letter of the law, as any suit for damages would be disastrous in the Israeli courts. An example of their work involves “Crossing the Line,” a fast train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem that crosses the Green Line into the West Bank in two sections. The Israeli neighbors did not want the train and noise near their property so the project was moved and this will entail almost the entire destruction of the Palestinian village of Beit Iksa. Painfully there is now a petition to the world from the Palestinian village to put the train on land that is ALREADY expropriated. The train is being built by European and American companies.
Then there is the issue of financing of the occupation. All six Israeli banks are directly involved in supporting settlements. Dalit reminds us that you cannot separate the economy of the occupation from the economy of Israel from the economy of the US for that matter. For instance, Soda Stream, an Israeli company that makes carbonated water, just went public on Nasdaq.
She turns her attention to what does it mean to boycott settlement markets. She describes 18 tycoons that control the large corporations that are involved and notes that if they start losing money, they will pull out of the settlements. She describes living in Israel both as frustrating but “We feel effective.” As an example, her group will go to a checkpoint, they will document the infrastructure, the telecommunications, etc, and then google the companies, do the appropriate research, and put the information on the website. “Direct action with no gas! We use our privilege to see the occupation.” They also go to security industry exhibitions and meet with people eager to sell a host of weaponry. She focuses on crowd dispersal, what is called in the business, “nonlethal weapons” although everyone knows that these weapons can be lethal in high enough doses or with direct impact. For her she feels this is personal, as an activist who has been faced with tear gas and other methods used at demonstrations.
Another aspect of this macabre business Dalit describes is weaponry produced in the US. Because the US gives Israel an enormous amount of money to buy American military equipment, there are now Israeli entrepreneurs who establish companies in the US and then benefit from the largesse of our tax dollars. Thus there are many forces within the US that have strong economic interests in maintaining this lucrative arrangement where the US is basically financing its own war industries. This lead a group of activists, after a demonstration, to return empty tear gas canisters to the US ambassador. They were promptly arrested for possession of weapons, but the charges were later dropped.
Dalit reminds us that there is a lot to be done in the US and any effort contributes to the cause. It is important to pick strategic targets that also involve an educational component. She feels boycotting computer companies or generic drug companies, for instance, are not strategic activities. She is very optimistic, both because this movement is lead by Palestinian activists and because there is a response in the Israeli Knesset that implies that people in power are worried. The Anti BDS law in process will make individuals personally liable for any damage to companies. The Association Law aims to outlaw any NGO that provides information to foreign entities that might lead to charges of war crimes against Israelis. The Fighting Terrorism Law targets any Israeli or Palestinian activist who does any activity against Israeli soldiers or State symbols, and vaguely and obscurely defines all of these activities as terrorism. This could include nonviolent, legitimate resistance to the occupation. The Prohibition on Instituting Boycott Law will criminalize Israeli citizens who support local and international BDS activities. Recently the Knesset began an investigation of the funding of NGOs.
Dalit sees these rightwing trends as plunging into fascism and of particular concern is that these anti-democratic assaults are originating in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, which is supposed to be the cornerstone of a democratic society.
I leave this meeting with the sense that there is a tremendous amount of work to be done in the US which is actively enmeshed with the military machinery and corporations that make the Israeli occupation possible. In addition, the “only democracy in the Middle East” seems to be heading rapidly in an dangerous direction; I wonder how many “Israel right or wrong” supporters fully appreciate this and when will supporting the actions of the Israeli government become untenable to a wider group of people. I am impressed that a small group of thoughtful and dedicated activists can have such a significant impact on the process. I only hope that the next time I visit Israel, I will not be visiting them in prison.
1/6 The skeletons in the closet
Posted by Alice Rothchild on the HaHRP delegation:
1/6 The skeletons in the closet
I have been reading about the Israeli governmental criticism and talk of censorship of left wing academics in Israel and I am eager to meet a professor who has been under fire. Professor Yehouda Shenhav of Tel Aviv University has a way of exploding the assumptions that frame many of our understandings of the conflict. A brilliant and provocative thinker and author of “Bounded by the Green Line,” he describes himself as a member of the radical left. An older man in a light blue sweater and jeans, he starts out stating that peace negotiations are useless, the two state solution is a menace to Jews and Palestinians, and he believes in one space, (not necessarily a state) for two people.
He has definitely caught my attention. He argues that there is no political theory on which to base the end of the conflict except the symbol of the Green Line which was an arbitrary ceasefire line that most use as a litmus test for further conversation. He notes that the Green Line has been erased by settlements, yet leftist political theory is founded on this vanishing line. He asks rhetorically, can you evacuate 500,000 Jews, or if you leave out Jerusalem, 350,000 Jews, or if you make border corrections, 135,000 Jews. Not going to happen.
The concept of a Jewish state is problematic as long as a Jewish state is a recipe for the future transfer of Palestinians. He explains that these racist, fascist tendencies are a continuation of 1948. The Jewish state was based on ethnic cleansing, with the destruction of villages, massacres, and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of indigenous Palestinians. This is the Israeli skeleton in the closet. “Whoever holds on to ’67 as the beginning of the conflict is hallucinating and this is the Israeli left.” They participate in masking the atrocities of ’48 and thus keep that particular skeleton deep in the closet.
He further explores the ubiquitous refusal to deal with the refugees from 1948 and the anomaly of having Arab citizens of Israel who do not have equal civil rights with their fellow Jewish citizens. Israel is thus an ethnic/racial state which denies the rights of the Palestinian national collective within it. Sovereignty, territory, and identity are all interconnected. He then tells us this painful story of a Palestinian student of his who bought a house in a Jewish settlement on the Green Line. She asked Professor Shenhav if he would be the formal landlord so that she will be safe in case there is land transfer; she wants to be sure her children have access to their home.
Professor Shenhav reminds us that within the origins of Zionism there was tremendous debate on how to emancipate the Jews and the meaning of a Jewish homeland. He emphatically states that Jews have a right to live in this region. He notes that in 1942 in New York at the Biltmore Convention, the Zionist movement for the first time, clearly stated that it wanted a sovereign Jewish state. That decision led to ethnic cleansing and to the homogenization of identity, but Palestinians and Jews remained entangled. He adds, we live in one state with apartheid, not only in the Occupied Territories, but also within Israel, and this critical point is not understood by the Israeli left. This is a grave mistake. He questions, “What is the difference between a settlement in and out of the Green Line? Nothing.” He does not suggest that all Jews return to Europe, he is in fact from Iraq, but he feels it is important to acknowledge that these are all settlements as well. Israeli is a “wannabe” democracy, based on a state of exception with emergency rules, a legacy of British imperialism and Jewish legislation. He reminds us that from 1948-1966 Palestinians within the Green Line lived mostly under a military regime, with permits to move, do business, etc. This is colonialism. Since 1967 the colonialism has extended into the West Bank and Gaza, so Israel cannot exist as a democratic state without military rule of Palestinians. As examples he cites a series of racial laws that are percolating through the Knesset: the rules against teaching or commemorating the Nakba, the loyalty oath to the Jewish state required of all citizens, demographic laws such as family reunification that prevent partners of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship from moving into Israel. He argues that this is a continuation of the 1948 war by other means.
He asks, “How does a Jewish racial state cope with non-Jews? There is no difference between Meretz and Lieberman except in degree of sincerity. When threatened, all Jews become [Avigdor] Lieberman. In his analysis, many progressive intellectuals speak from a position in the map of Israeli identity politics as “white Jews.” Meanwhile 60% of settlers are from the lower strata of society. A few months ago in Sweden he was asked what is the best welfare state and he replied, “West Bank Jewish settlements.” They have full employment, housing, education, health care; this is a very attractive deal for Mizrachi and Orthodox Jews. Should these folks then pay the price for peace when the Israeli government has sent them there and supplied them with electricity, housing, internet, etc? He argues that the liberal Israeli community defines itself through “othering” the settler community that is supported by the government.
Provocatively, he also believes that while Israeli liberals are proud to be secular, being here is not a secular decision, a Zionist inherently cannot be secular. Jewish nationality is by definition religious and Hebrew is a religious language. In his classes he teaches that there is no “Jewish secularity,” even Barak was not willing to give up “the Holy Places” although he probably did not believe in them.
He begins to explore the Arab Jewish story, and states that the Zionists used violent methods to get people like his parents to leave Iraq. In 1951 an agreement was made between Israel and Iraq to “denaturalize the Jews of Iraq,” as they had little interest in coming to Israel. Ultimately six bombs went off in five months (one placed in a synagogue) and ultimately the 120,000 Jews of Iraq left; there is a lingering theory that the bombs were placed by Zionists, but the government of Israel claims these files are confidential. The Iraqi Jewish property was subsequently confiscated (somebody profited from this forced migration) and the immigrants arrived in Israel to find themselves second class citizens. The Jews of Iraq were highly educated, even more so than the Europeans, but after ten years of life in Israel, they were at the bottom of the Israeli educational ladder. This discrepancy has only gotten worse and he notes that in Tel Aviv University, 9% of the faculty is Mizrachi and 0.5% Palestinian.
He then explores the strange case of the recent Russian immigration which has unexpected consequences and shows that it is difficult to divide nationalism from religion. “What does it mean to be a Jew?” Professor Shenhav queries. Today some 300,000 people who came from the Soviet Union are not Jews but where brought here by the Law of Return. Professor Shenhav states that this is the mirror of the Nuremberg Trials: Hitler declared that if a person had 1/6 Jewish ancestry then he was a Jew. Ben Gurion used the same criteria. So now in Israel there are women from Kazakhstan who are Jewish by nationality and Muslim by religion! He hypothesizes that this may create fissures between nationality and religion as well as strange alliances. He sees right wing Mizrachi Jews in alliance with left leaning but ultranationalist Barak and wonders why the Israeli left supports an apartheid system? “If I have a right of return to a Jewish settlement, then why can’t a Palestinian have a right of return from Nablus to Jaffa?” He thinks it is important to rethink sovereignty, a 17th century concept that began with national borders. He claims this concept does not apply here, instead we have a continuous civil war. He speaks of a shared sovereignty that crosses borders, land, and populations where populations and territories can be in a space together with “horizontal sovereignty;” where for instance, a Palestinian in Galilee picks one or dual citizenship. This sounds intriguing, even if this is a bit hard to comprehend.
I am even more amazed when he states that he doesn’t like identity politics, but he thinks that we have to be focusing on what are the rights of Jews in the region. We all know that the rights of Palestinians are being violated, but who has defined the rights of Jews? He sees that the Israeli right has a totally military solution to that question. But, he states, we need to reverse this. How do we protect Jewish rights when the space is democratically organized? This was first discussed by Martin Buber who famously warned that the first victims of the Jewish state would be the Jews themselves. Professor Shenhav wonders if Jews are much like the crusaders, arriving like crusaders for a limited time, terrorizing the local population with no intention to integrate, and ultimately destined to be kicked out. The white supremacist aspect of Israeli Jews believe that Israel is a branch of Europe. “How many Jews speak Arabic?” he demands. This is all about power relationships.
Out time is up and we are filled with questions. Clearly this man has many provocative and exceptional observations that rile up Israeli authorities and lead me to want to read his books and understand his views further. If he loses his right to work or to speak and is branded a traitor, then that will be a sad day for whatever will be left of free speech in Israel.
1/6 The skeletons in the closet
I have been reading about the Israeli governmental criticism and talk of censorship of left wing academics in Israel and I am eager to meet a professor who has been under fire. Professor Yehouda Shenhav of Tel Aviv University has a way of exploding the assumptions that frame many of our understandings of the conflict. A brilliant and provocative thinker and author of “Bounded by the Green Line,” he describes himself as a member of the radical left. An older man in a light blue sweater and jeans, he starts out stating that peace negotiations are useless, the two state solution is a menace to Jews and Palestinians, and he believes in one space, (not necessarily a state) for two people.
He has definitely caught my attention. He argues that there is no political theory on which to base the end of the conflict except the symbol of the Green Line which was an arbitrary ceasefire line that most use as a litmus test for further conversation. He notes that the Green Line has been erased by settlements, yet leftist political theory is founded on this vanishing line. He asks rhetorically, can you evacuate 500,000 Jews, or if you leave out Jerusalem, 350,000 Jews, or if you make border corrections, 135,000 Jews. Not going to happen.
The concept of a Jewish state is problematic as long as a Jewish state is a recipe for the future transfer of Palestinians. He explains that these racist, fascist tendencies are a continuation of 1948. The Jewish state was based on ethnic cleansing, with the destruction of villages, massacres, and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of indigenous Palestinians. This is the Israeli skeleton in the closet. “Whoever holds on to ’67 as the beginning of the conflict is hallucinating and this is the Israeli left.” They participate in masking the atrocities of ’48 and thus keep that particular skeleton deep in the closet.
He further explores the ubiquitous refusal to deal with the refugees from 1948 and the anomaly of having Arab citizens of Israel who do not have equal civil rights with their fellow Jewish citizens. Israel is thus an ethnic/racial state which denies the rights of the Palestinian national collective within it. Sovereignty, territory, and identity are all interconnected. He then tells us this painful story of a Palestinian student of his who bought a house in a Jewish settlement on the Green Line. She asked Professor Shenhav if he would be the formal landlord so that she will be safe in case there is land transfer; she wants to be sure her children have access to their home.
Professor Shenhav reminds us that within the origins of Zionism there was tremendous debate on how to emancipate the Jews and the meaning of a Jewish homeland. He emphatically states that Jews have a right to live in this region. He notes that in 1942 in New York at the Biltmore Convention, the Zionist movement for the first time, clearly stated that it wanted a sovereign Jewish state. That decision led to ethnic cleansing and to the homogenization of identity, but Palestinians and Jews remained entangled. He adds, we live in one state with apartheid, not only in the Occupied Territories, but also within Israel, and this critical point is not understood by the Israeli left. This is a grave mistake. He questions, “What is the difference between a settlement in and out of the Green Line? Nothing.” He does not suggest that all Jews return to Europe, he is in fact from Iraq, but he feels it is important to acknowledge that these are all settlements as well. Israeli is a “wannabe” democracy, based on a state of exception with emergency rules, a legacy of British imperialism and Jewish legislation. He reminds us that from 1948-1966 Palestinians within the Green Line lived mostly under a military regime, with permits to move, do business, etc. This is colonialism. Since 1967 the colonialism has extended into the West Bank and Gaza, so Israel cannot exist as a democratic state without military rule of Palestinians. As examples he cites a series of racial laws that are percolating through the Knesset: the rules against teaching or commemorating the Nakba, the loyalty oath to the Jewish state required of all citizens, demographic laws such as family reunification that prevent partners of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship from moving into Israel. He argues that this is a continuation of the 1948 war by other means.
He asks, “How does a Jewish racial state cope with non-Jews? There is no difference between Meretz and Lieberman except in degree of sincerity. When threatened, all Jews become [Avigdor] Lieberman. In his analysis, many progressive intellectuals speak from a position in the map of Israeli identity politics as “white Jews.” Meanwhile 60% of settlers are from the lower strata of society. A few months ago in Sweden he was asked what is the best welfare state and he replied, “West Bank Jewish settlements.” They have full employment, housing, education, health care; this is a very attractive deal for Mizrachi and Orthodox Jews. Should these folks then pay the price for peace when the Israeli government has sent them there and supplied them with electricity, housing, internet, etc? He argues that the liberal Israeli community defines itself through “othering” the settler community that is supported by the government.
Provocatively, he also believes that while Israeli liberals are proud to be secular, being here is not a secular decision, a Zionist inherently cannot be secular. Jewish nationality is by definition religious and Hebrew is a religious language. In his classes he teaches that there is no “Jewish secularity,” even Barak was not willing to give up “the Holy Places” although he probably did not believe in them.
He begins to explore the Arab Jewish story, and states that the Zionists used violent methods to get people like his parents to leave Iraq. In 1951 an agreement was made between Israel and Iraq to “denaturalize the Jews of Iraq,” as they had little interest in coming to Israel. Ultimately six bombs went off in five months (one placed in a synagogue) and ultimately the 120,000 Jews of Iraq left; there is a lingering theory that the bombs were placed by Zionists, but the government of Israel claims these files are confidential. The Iraqi Jewish property was subsequently confiscated (somebody profited from this forced migration) and the immigrants arrived in Israel to find themselves second class citizens. The Jews of Iraq were highly educated, even more so than the Europeans, but after ten years of life in Israel, they were at the bottom of the Israeli educational ladder. This discrepancy has only gotten worse and he notes that in Tel Aviv University, 9% of the faculty is Mizrachi and 0.5% Palestinian.
He then explores the strange case of the recent Russian immigration which has unexpected consequences and shows that it is difficult to divide nationalism from religion. “What does it mean to be a Jew?” Professor Shenhav queries. Today some 300,000 people who came from the Soviet Union are not Jews but where brought here by the Law of Return. Professor Shenhav states that this is the mirror of the Nuremberg Trials: Hitler declared that if a person had 1/6 Jewish ancestry then he was a Jew. Ben Gurion used the same criteria. So now in Israel there are women from Kazakhstan who are Jewish by nationality and Muslim by religion! He hypothesizes that this may create fissures between nationality and religion as well as strange alliances. He sees right wing Mizrachi Jews in alliance with left leaning but ultranationalist Barak and wonders why the Israeli left supports an apartheid system? “If I have a right of return to a Jewish settlement, then why can’t a Palestinian have a right of return from Nablus to Jaffa?” He thinks it is important to rethink sovereignty, a 17th century concept that began with national borders. He claims this concept does not apply here, instead we have a continuous civil war. He speaks of a shared sovereignty that crosses borders, land, and populations where populations and territories can be in a space together with “horizontal sovereignty;” where for instance, a Palestinian in Galilee picks one or dual citizenship. This sounds intriguing, even if this is a bit hard to comprehend.
I am even more amazed when he states that he doesn’t like identity politics, but he thinks that we have to be focusing on what are the rights of Jews in the region. We all know that the rights of Palestinians are being violated, but who has defined the rights of Jews? He sees that the Israeli right has a totally military solution to that question. But, he states, we need to reverse this. How do we protect Jewish rights when the space is democratically organized? This was first discussed by Martin Buber who famously warned that the first victims of the Jewish state would be the Jews themselves. Professor Shenhav wonders if Jews are much like the crusaders, arriving like crusaders for a limited time, terrorizing the local population with no intention to integrate, and ultimately destined to be kicked out. The white supremacist aspect of Israeli Jews believe that Israel is a branch of Europe. “How many Jews speak Arabic?” he demands. This is all about power relationships.
Out time is up and we are filled with questions. Clearly this man has many provocative and exceptional observations that rile up Israeli authorities and lead me to want to read his books and understand his views further. If he loses his right to work or to speak and is branded a traitor, then that will be a sad day for whatever will be left of free speech in Israel.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
1/6 The nuances of BDS, How can Israelis boycott themselves?
1/6 The nuances of BDS, How can Israelis boycott themselves?
Because most Israelis are opposed to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanction movement, I am very interested in hearing from Kobi Snitz, a thin, intense man active with Boycott from Within and Anarchists Against the Wall. Meeting with the delegation in Tel Aviv, he states that the Palestinian BDS guidelines are clear in principle, refined and legalistic, but the applications are subtle. For a supportive Israeli, what can he do? Quit his job? Stop eating? Obviously not, but there are many nuanced decisions to be made, for instance in the world of universities. Kobi outlines some of the intricacies:
International academics can work with Israeli academics but not build institutional cooperation.
If an Israeli academic wants to publish in an international journal, this always includes his or her institutional affiliation which then lends prestige for the institution, but this is OK if the article is more about the academic than the institution.
Internationals can hire individual Israelis but not build cooperative alliances between two institutions.
Giving a scholarship to an individual Israeli is OK, but allocating a general fund for Israeli students is not advised.
The Boycott from Within group also turned its attention to the cultural boycott, writing letters to individual artists urging them not to perform in Israel. This turned out to be much more successful than expected. Sometimes artists highlight why they refuse to perform, although usually artists make various excuses to cancel their tours. Like the Pixies, the Tindersticks and Elvis Costello, we only hear of the artists who have already advertised their tours and then cancel. Although the reaction to cancellations is often to call the performers anti-Semites, the political connection (ie, this show was cancelled due to the attack on Gaza) is being made more often. While he expected the cultural boycott to be much harder as artists are not usually particularly politically brave and are concerned with their reputations, this aspect of BDS has become a leading edge. Kobi claims that every artist now knows that coming to Israel is a political decision and it might just be easier not to come.
A handful of academics employed by universities have signed the BDS call. Kobi explains that there is now a letter in the Israeli Higher Education Council addressing this issue. The letter talks of the sanctity of intellectual freedom but states that the call for academic boycott goes beyond the limits and institutions should act appropriately (ie get rid of those faculty). Kobi notes that no one who supports BDS can get tenure and tenured faculty find their lives made unpleasant, do not get promotions, are given the worst courses, cannot get to conferences, (a kind of passive transfer for Jews I wonder). In general, universities are proud of their contributions to the security industry. He explains that the Technion is really an extension of Rafael, a big security company outside of Haifa. Tel Aviv University has a Shabak headquarters (otherwise known as Shin Bet, the Israeli FBI) on the edge of campus. The Middle East department is actually an extension of Shabak, doing political research and intelligence.
The group Who Profits? does economic research into the involvement of Israeli companies in profiting from the occupation. Kobi notes that not only is this easier to do, but this gets to the heart of the Israeli economy as practically every company has some involvement, especially the big high tech and construction companies.
The Knesset has recently formed a committee of inquiry into the sources of funding for leftist organizations, so “things will be interesting.” The Boycott from Within is mostly interested in letter writing campaigns and research, they don’t expect to convince most Israelis, and are looked at very negatively. He finds the media hostile but interested. He has learned to approve all written interviews prior to publication and to do only live radio and TV interviews, in order not to have his opinions misrepresented. They are now approaching Zionist groups, moving into the world of socially responsible investing, hoping to add Israeli settlement companies to the non-kosher screen along with tobacco and guns. He argues that the settlement economy is the same as the economy of the occupation and wants letters of support from organizations like Peace Now that publically want to end the settlements. If 60% of Israelis support evacuating the settlements for peace, will they be willing to support a socially responsible investing screen that includes settlement products?
I wonder about Tobi’s personal life as he is a mathematician who works at the Weizmann Institute in neurobiology. His family is supportive and his colleagues are not hostile. The Weizmann Institute was involved in security in the 1950s with the nuclear program, but now does not have that focus. He is excited by the growing BDS movement and finds his work dynamic and hopeful, a refreshing comment from someone on the often discouraged Israeli left.
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Because most Israelis are opposed to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanction movement, I am very interested in hearing from Kobi Snitz, a thin, intense man active with Boycott from Within and Anarchists Against the Wall. Meeting with the delegation in Tel Aviv, he states that the Palestinian BDS guidelines are clear in principle, refined and legalistic, but the applications are subtle. For a supportive Israeli, what can he do? Quit his job? Stop eating? Obviously not, but there are many nuanced decisions to be made, for instance in the world of universities. Kobi outlines some of the intricacies:
International academics can work with Israeli academics but not build institutional cooperation.
If an Israeli academic wants to publish in an international journal, this always includes his or her institutional affiliation which then lends prestige for the institution, but this is OK if the article is more about the academic than the institution.
Internationals can hire individual Israelis but not build cooperative alliances between two institutions.
Giving a scholarship to an individual Israeli is OK, but allocating a general fund for Israeli students is not advised.
The Boycott from Within group also turned its attention to the cultural boycott, writing letters to individual artists urging them not to perform in Israel. This turned out to be much more successful than expected. Sometimes artists highlight why they refuse to perform, although usually artists make various excuses to cancel their tours. Like the Pixies, the Tindersticks and Elvis Costello, we only hear of the artists who have already advertised their tours and then cancel. Although the reaction to cancellations is often to call the performers anti-Semites, the political connection (ie, this show was cancelled due to the attack on Gaza) is being made more often. While he expected the cultural boycott to be much harder as artists are not usually particularly politically brave and are concerned with their reputations, this aspect of BDS has become a leading edge. Kobi claims that every artist now knows that coming to Israel is a political decision and it might just be easier not to come.
A handful of academics employed by universities have signed the BDS call. Kobi explains that there is now a letter in the Israeli Higher Education Council addressing this issue. The letter talks of the sanctity of intellectual freedom but states that the call for academic boycott goes beyond the limits and institutions should act appropriately (ie get rid of those faculty). Kobi notes that no one who supports BDS can get tenure and tenured faculty find their lives made unpleasant, do not get promotions, are given the worst courses, cannot get to conferences, (a kind of passive transfer for Jews I wonder). In general, universities are proud of their contributions to the security industry. He explains that the Technion is really an extension of Rafael, a big security company outside of Haifa. Tel Aviv University has a Shabak headquarters (otherwise known as Shin Bet, the Israeli FBI) on the edge of campus. The Middle East department is actually an extension of Shabak, doing political research and intelligence.
The group Who Profits? does economic research into the involvement of Israeli companies in profiting from the occupation. Kobi notes that not only is this easier to do, but this gets to the heart of the Israeli economy as practically every company has some involvement, especially the big high tech and construction companies.
The Knesset has recently formed a committee of inquiry into the sources of funding for leftist organizations, so “things will be interesting.” The Boycott from Within is mostly interested in letter writing campaigns and research, they don’t expect to convince most Israelis, and are looked at very negatively. He finds the media hostile but interested. He has learned to approve all written interviews prior to publication and to do only live radio and TV interviews, in order not to have his opinions misrepresented. They are now approaching Zionist groups, moving into the world of socially responsible investing, hoping to add Israeli settlement companies to the non-kosher screen along with tobacco and guns. He argues that the settlement economy is the same as the economy of the occupation and wants letters of support from organizations like Peace Now that publically want to end the settlements. If 60% of Israelis support evacuating the settlements for peace, will they be willing to support a socially responsible investing screen that includes settlement products?
I wonder about Tobi’s personal life as he is a mathematician who works at the Weizmann Institute in neurobiology. His family is supportive and his colleagues are not hostile. The Weizmann Institute was involved in security in the 1950s with the nuclear program, but now does not have that focus. He is excited by the growing BDS movement and finds his work dynamic and hopeful, a refreshing comment from someone on the often discouraged Israeli left.
--
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