Israelis work to bring more West Bank children to Tel Aviv beaches

After three hours at a checkpoint from the West Bank, many in the group seemed quite serious getting off the bus at the Tel Baruch beach. The entire expanse of sand and water was enveloped by the white-hot glow of a hard-hitting sun. I was partly blinded by the light, partly preoccupied: I wasn’t entirely sure how to conduct myself if I heard a child say, “The Jews took everything,” as they took in the exquisite Mediterranean coastline, speaking from memories of loss inherited.

The sea, though, immediately washed away such theorization of the mind. Everyone was breaking into smiles! I wonder how many years it had been since they’d seen the sea, if at all.

Soon, kids and adults alike tumbled with the waves in their inner tubes. Some of the boys and I threw around a beach ball, often hitting people on the head by mistake, making the laughter grow exponentially. We also played a game where I held them by their ankles, sending them gushing through the water like they were tubing.

A crowd favorite was the moment when one of the mothers brought out a darbouka into the water. Many of the women around her clapped and danced, while a boy showed me how to clap, stomp, and shoulder-pump in the style of Dabke. It was magical to see everyone enjoy Palestinian music and culture from inside the refreshing waves like that.

I also showed several children how to do a water pistol with one hand and two hands. I wished that the next time they get the opportunity to visit a beach, they’ll be able to prank their friends and family by shooting water with full ease.

While most of us didn’t speak each other’s language, the waves and all that we can do with the water served as a common language and common joy.

I believe that projects such as this urgently need to increase. First of all, all children here deserve a childhood filled with the beach and fun in the sun. In addition, these projects make us realize the fundamental things that can bring us together.

Thoughts that it may be an entire year till the same children would be back threatened to beat me down. So instead I tried with all my might to hope that such projects will cumulatively reopen the gates one day – for people to mix and mingle again as fellow people.

A school making history: Jewish-Arab integrated education

Student artwork at a Jewish-Arab integrated school

Volunteering at a Jewish-Arab integrated school was my most joy-filled time in Jerusalem. I feel that, despite all the dehumanization of both Jews and Arabs in the Holy Land, one can wash away prejudice by interacting with the children of ‘the other side.’ I probably couldn’t have engaged with this land in certain meaningful ways without also having been inside the walls of this school. For example, away from the godforsaken ‘adult’ world of strife outside, I saw how kids made real bonds across the divide: through the shared experience of classroom games, soccer during breaks, and together earning the teacher’s ire and together facing her chastisement.

It didn’t take long for questions to emerge in my mind, though: namely, the predominance of Hebrew despite the intended bilingualism, and the limits to sharing both the Israeli and Palestinian narratives.

I sat down with one of the teachers to hear more:

“If the school were perfect, Hebrew and Arabic would be fifty-fifty,” she said, lamenting how if one kid speaks Hebrew, then all the children cascade into speaking Hebrew. Similarly, when staff at a meeting are mixed, then that meeting by necessity is conducted in Hebrew. She didn’t think the Palestinian staff had negative feelings about this, but she couldn’t be sure if this was always the case.

We talked about how most Jewish Israeli students don’t manage to learn Arabic well enough to have natural conversations in the language. I surmised it might take more structured opportunities for them to apply their Arabic as a living language. Moreover, more Jewish Israeli adults who speak Arabic must be sorely needed as role models for the pupils to gain the self-confidence to hone their ability.

We later talked about how the school handles national days of commemoration. How on Yom Hazikaron, or the Israeli Memorial Day for fallen soldiers, Palestinian staff and students do not stand for the siren marking the nationwide minute of solemn silence. How, for a time, many Palestinian children stopped coming to school on this day of commemoration. (By contrast, they do stand in silence for Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.)

“You haven’t seen a single person stand up for the siren, even by accident?” I asked.

“No. It’s like it’s ingrained in everybody. Even if people identify with the sadness, they simply can’t take part.”

In that moment, I contemplated what she was introducing to me, something perhaps ineffable. It was a capacity for people who have hurt each other to empathize, but short of crossing a line – a line Israelis and Palestinians drew together in blood and tears.

The teacher told me that last year, the school instituted a change to have its commemoration of the Nakba together with Yom Hazikaron. She described the undeniable change she sensed among the Palestinian children, a feeling that their presence mattered and was being validated on Yom Hazikaron.

“I think the commemoration allowed them to be seen and allowed their self-esteem to be recognized. You know, I think recognizing each other’s self-esteem is half the battle.”

I also thought about the act of accepting Israelis as they all stood up to honor their fallen brothers and sisters. This, too, is making room for the other’s self-esteem. In both directions, there can be room to acknowledge the uncompromiseable core of the other’s self-worth.

What a place, I thought to myself. In its walls, students are stretching their minds. They’re recognizing that mutual dignity is created not only by bilingualism and multiculturalism, but also by validating the other’s narrative of struggle. To survive, resist, and express one’s right to dignity.

I asked her how she’s changed after ten years at the school. Unassuming and ‘unproselytizing,’ she told me that the school simply opened her eyes. It allowed her to live her ideals. In the past, she’d believed in equality but “had never talked to an Arab kid.” Now, she knows she could never go back to teaching at her previous school. Despite having loved her job, she would not be able to go back to an atmosphere in which people believed Israel could supposedly do no wrong.

While believing in Israel as a state, she was yearning for her country to grow into the democratic and tolerant ideals it set for itself at independence.

Impressions from ‘Judea and Samaria’

I was lucky enough to meet with several people who believe in the Jewish return to Judea and Samaria, or the ‘West Bank’ in more politically correct terms. I firmly believe all parties must be engaged in pursuit of a sustainable peace, so this was one attempt for me to walk the walk and start understanding the so-called ‘settlers.’

I first spoke with an Old City resident who has an extensive network spanning Hebron/Kiryat Arba, Susiya, Gush Etzion, Beit El, Itamar, and others. I appreciated her giving me her time, and reminded myself to stay open to listening.

Sure enough, I’ve come out of the experience utterly confused: how can you open up your heart and mind to accept someone’s decency and passion, while categorically rejecting some of their important opinions and beliefs? Having learned deep skepticism for people like Meir Kahane, Baruch Marzel, and Moshe Feiglin, how do I then keep composure with an endearing lady who tells me she personally knows these and other such folks?

Despite my discomfort, I must say I felt a warm pull by her passion. She claimed that her life’s mission was self-improvement in connection with God. She seemed to truly believe she must continue to put ‘love’ and ‘light’ into the world. And with an unwavering voice, she said all the people she knows in Judea and Samaria are full of that love and light. They are supposedly guided by pure intent and pure heart, despite what some may say about their actions. Here are roughly some quotes in which you can perhaps feel how agreeable and persuasive she is:

“Bringing peace isn’t about ‘conflict resolution,’ but about individual transformation through education and inspiration in the context of community and interactions within it. It can’t be done with strategy. It’s an evolution of how people see the world and how things are done. We will have to leave behind history as history, since it doesn’t and shouldn’t define the totality of reality. We have to create a reality that has never existed before, defined by our values, and that’s extremely difficult—seemingly impossible. But this is simply the only way.”

“We have to start behaving as though the Times of Redemption are already here, so that we are conditioning the world to be amenable to their arrival. We have to begin seeing through the Messiah’s eyes.”

Through this lady’s connections, I later met a lovely couple in Tekoa, part of the Gush Etzion bloc. My feelings jived with their desire for community, family, and the centrality of God in one’s life, which brought them to Tekoa from the United States. Like our friend in the Old City, they too told us about how crucial peace with oneself is for achieving any other larger-scale peace. The Jewish people must have unity first (including healing secular-religious divisions) before hoping to achieve peace with the Arabs, the husband said. I gathered that, in such a process, people’s respect for others ceases to depend on whether they agree with them.

Once the Jewish people thus makes peace with itself, it will spill over to the world. He also said the Arabs must also work on themselves, I assume in parallel. They need to begin telling each other that violence and killing are against the Quran. As long as Arabs are afraid to talk to him or his wife for fear of being called a collaborator with Israel, peace will not come.

“We’re supposed to be here. That’s clear to me.”

“You must be a light unto all people you meet.”

Perhaps you can’t really get a sense from these quotes. But I can’t shake his clarity from my mind. How he can say with quiet confidence that extremism in Judea and Samaria hasn’t seen historic growth. How the BDS movement will hurt its adopters the most, not Israel, by giving up Israel’s “computer chips and cures for cancer.”

Listening to these individuals in Tekoa and the Old City, I felt I was entering a world existing on an entirely other plane than political labels or political accountability. It’s a world where everything is having faith in the long-term process. Where constituents don’t vote for a political settlement promising ‘peace’ in the short term. It’s a world where people are reaching for something that doesn’t yet exist, where family and community serve as an incredible source of support for achieving the impossible.

Is this really the same world that periodically gives rise to those twisted acts we hear about in the news? Is it at all because people are judged more by the ‘pure intent’ of their actions rather than by their immediate physical consequences?

If, according to your worldview, your actions cannot truly be judged by secular law or by how they affect a political ‘peace process,’ then at what point do you stop and evaluate your actions? How much adversity (some of it self-wrought) will your faith help you cope with before you rethink your religious convictions?

I come away with respect for these people, including for the spiritual force that they’ve found for themselves. But I still hunger to understand whether they see their faithful actions as having so far contributed to their ideals such as equality, social justice, and dignity for all in the land between the River and the Sea.

Adrift between Learning and Voyeurism, Beauty and Neglect

 

The alleys of Al Amari,
Dirty whites, greys, browns, and beiges
Surround our ‘tour group’ like a dreary maze.

Vibrant colors emanate only from
The beautiful women’s dresses
And the cheap tee shirts and shorts of playing children.

‘Cause homes, streets, neighborhoods of color
Come only with the day-by-day care
Of folks able to invest.

Still, their undying energy can be felt
Every time children exclaim: How are you!
As I shake their little hands.
Every time young men greet us: Welcome!
Like it’s the best days of their lives.

Their hospitable spirit is comforting,
Even life giving!
In a place where my footing is so unsure.

Somehow, I feel so funny
In a ‘study tour’ through other people’s stagnation,
Passing through, wondering
About the right words to say,
In a situation that should be
About the right actions to take.

  

This unease lingers,
Until once again I walked the dusty hills of Susiya,
Part of a protest against its demolition.

Until I saw those small but brave Susiya children
Marching, almost surfing on their excitement
That the world was waking up!

Until I felt myself giving —
Not on a tour for my self-enrichment,
Not one-time waves and handshakes,
— but simple continuity, ready to be nurtured.

A search for the universal lessons of the Holocaust

I’ve visited Yad Vashem quite a few times. It’s a place where I contemplate humanity, loss, resilience, and intolerance. With a deeper knowledge of Israel and Palestine than before, I decided to revisit the museum and ponder history, perhaps with new eyes. Questions swirled in my mind. How should memory be constructed? How do young minds absorb history? Is Yad Vashem curated and arranged in the best way possible for Israelis to stay vigilant but not paranoid?

What I’d heard, but not studied, was that Holocaust education tends to reinforce Israeli distrust of its enemies rather than encourage the humanistic lessons of the tragedy. I’ve thought of possible manifestations of such an approach. For instance, Israel has not yet recognized the Armenian genocide, in order not to rock the boat with Turkey—for the Arab world is supposedly too large and hostile. It also trades arms with Azerbaijan, which threatens impoverished Armenia with all-out war over disputed land. And what of Israeli responses to the genocides in Srebrenica and Rwanda?

Admittedly, I haven’t observed Holocaust education in-action in Israeli classrooms, on trips to Auschwitz, or on tours through Yad Vashem. Walking through the museum, however, I couldn’t help but receive the message of a huge machine of persecuting and killing Jews wherever they may be. I got no prominent information about the mass psychosis of the German people or the banality of evil among Nazi soldiers. I felt as if anti-Semitism was the one paramount force over so many other factors, such as the brokenness of the German people after WWI leading to their desire for a scapegoat. Where was there any real reflection of how human beings could have done all this? Does Yad Vashem treat anti-Semitism as a truer force than humanity’s flaws of apathy, fear, and narrow self-preservation?

Confirming my feelings about the exhibit, I found that Tom Segev writes the following in The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (page 464):

“The effort to rehabilitate the image of the Holocaust’s victims and survivors, to support the ideological struggle of the state, and to shape the memorial culture deterred Israeli historians from trying to understand Nazism. They feared, perhaps, that such an attempt would be interpreted as a justification of it or as a challenge to its abstract, almost mystic status as the symbol of absolute evil. This fear inhibited research and explains why the most important books on Nazism and the extermination of the Jews were not written in Israel.”

At the same time, where Yad Vashem has fallen short, there have been Israelis who have examined the Holocaust to glean more universal lessons:

If the Holocaust is telling us that genocide could happen to anyone in any place, then why shy away from the question of how Israel may eventually engage in unprecedented persecution or violence against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories? If human beings in ‘enlightened’ Germany could do what they did, then fearful Israelis could do something terrible on a smaller scale, right? Below, I contemplated some factors that can make future Gaza Wars worse. More Israelis can study the dynamics of mass intolerance and dehumanization that can potentially be unleashed against their Palestinian neighbors. With the proper finesse, and refraining from over-comparison, the universal lessons of the Holocaust can provide rich food for thought for such introspection.

• Knowledge that more tunnels are being built in Gaza to attack Israel, which may invite more Israelis to think the IDF needs to ‘finish the job’ during the next operation… a mechanical decision from thinking Israel has no other choice
• A large-scale attack of terror by Hamas-linked individuals inside the West Bank or Israel, in which children or an unprecedented number of individuals die… lighting the fuse to Israeli fears of another genocide
• The media becoming more saturated with images and footage of Gaza’s children being taught to hate
• The media showing more images and footage of Gaza’s refugee population demanding their right of return to what is now Israel… deepening the impression of a desire to extinguish Israel by their demographic weight
• Israeli Arab politicians and thought leaders making more statements that can be interpreted as delegitimization of Israel and Jewish self-determination in the Middle East… perhaps in conjunction with more Israeli Arabs turning out to vote their ethnic leaders into office… stoking Israeli Jewish fears of losing control over their Jewish state

There may be scenarios in which the IDF uses unprecedented firepower to deter men and boys in Gaza from picking up arms again. Such would probably coincide with Israel perceiving a loss of control—international isolation, boycott and sanctions, a lack of diplomatic solidarity when Israel suffers acts of terrorism.

I can’t aptly predict how Israel may be led to massive persecution or violence against Palestinians as have not been seen before. But then again, scholars still can’t fully grasp how the Holocaust happened even with the luxury of hindsight. If more Israelis don’t get more used to deconstructing the Holocaust and other historical conflagrations, then how can they be vigilant toward their own society? After all, when a ‘student’ must juggle so many pressures, she may fail a difficult test without properly studying and training her mind.

Reactions to a vigorous and deeply perceptive anti-Zionist Israeli

I recently read a book by Michel Warschawski, entitled On the Border. A middle-aged Japanese activist who’s lived in Israel for many years recommended it to me. We had found much in common, as like me her children are half Moroccan-Israeli. As my suspicion had it, On the Border turned out to be a work written by quite a radical. My friend is a writer on a radical newspaper operating in Japan, and her Facebook updates would sometimes raise my eyebrows for want of ‘objectivity.’ (Though maybe my objectivity is in part because I haven’t seen as much suffering as she…)

Nevertheless, I reckon it was about time for me to read literature by a prominent anti-Zionist Israeli. Here are some of my reflections:

• Regardless of my own politics, it was invigorating to read about Michel’s youthful days as a Matzpen activist. I wondered whether my own youth would amount to anywhere close to his frenetic buzz disseminating leaflets and demonstrating on streets all over Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Reading about Michel, I felt respect for his deep hope and trust in international solidarity against oppression the world over. I wouldn’t say I’m on board with his ways, but I don’t need to agree in order to respect.

• I was troubled that Matzpen activists already faced ostracism in the 1970s. Some even decided not to have children to spare them a life of social exclusion. Though I tend to associate suffocation of political thought in Israel with recent years, maybe it’s an occurrence universal to all places and ages. Or maybe it was greater in Israel then than now, coinciding with the anti-Marxism sweeping the ‘Free World.’

• I learned to refrain from reflexively thinking most leftists are disconnected from the Israeli mainstream. How would I know this to be true with just hearsay and popular opinion? Throughout his life, Michel seems to have thought deeply about how to engage the larger Israeli society. Moreover, his concern for Israel felt strong and genuine to me. For example, it seems his heart yearned to find those Palestinians who, though few, wanted reconciliation and coexistence with Israelis from the bottom of their heart—that is, not just as pragmatism, as accepting a ‘necessary evil,’ or for gaining the world’s sympathy. He opined that Feisal Husseini was one such person.

• I appreciated how Michel endeavored hard to have more Palestinians comprehend Israel: how not everyone is a soldier obstructing Palestinian liberation; how most Israelis have nowhere to go than Israel, unlike those of classical colonialist states; how they’d never accept the refusal of their rights to sovereignty and self-defense as a people that survived Auschwitz.

• I reflected on the line between understanding and sympathizing with those committing terrorism, whether the DFLP, PFLP, or Hezbollah. I felt Michel was much too ready to support DFLP and PFLP fighters, and he described Hezbollah as having fought bravely against Israel during the Lebanon War. If Michel was intending his work for a broad readership, why did he leave out thorough explanations about how his moral compass pointed him to his opinions? How are we from outside his fold supposed to understand?

o For example, why does he make it sound like the DFLP’s murder of twenty-four child hostages at Ma’alot was Israel’s fault?

• With very little respect for Prime Minister Rabin, Michel contends that Rabin didn’t actually try hard to dismantle settlements. Why, then, was he assassinated? Again, while challenging mainstream beliefs, he does not help us understand the information unfamiliar for us “untrained folk.”

• I thank Michel for alerting me to secular Israelis’ lack of understanding for the religious and ‘traditional’ Jewish communities of Israel—the Mizrahim and Haredim. He characterizes the division as becoming an Iron Curtain. On one side, secular Jews (mostly Ashkenazim) desire a modern and secular state as the early Zionists did, as well as participation in a neoliberal world economy. On the other side, there are mostly Mizrahim who still live in developing towns and villages in the country’s periphery or in poorer areas of Tel Aviv. Skeptical of the free market and cosmopolitanism, they desire a return to their Jewish roots and to family values.

In all this, it seems extremely unlikely that Israel will make peace with the Palestinians without first making peace with itself. How will Israelis of different sectors join forces in pursuit of peace, if they have disdain and distrust toward each other? I thank Michel for opening up my eyes to criticize those who don’t dare to bridge this yawning chasm, and for giving me a sense of urgency that, without such bridging, Israel will increasingly suffer collisions between its neoliberalism and its messianic Jewish fundamentalism and nationalism.

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I am appreciative that my friend urged me to read On the Border because it did for me two things at once. First, it gave me the inspiration to be more dynamic and connect with more people on the ground. In parallel, it gave me increased clarity about how a society (in this case Israel) can be analyzed from a distance, and about how one’s activism should be strategic in making an impact within a larger context. I worry deeply for Israel and Palestine, so I’m glad Michel Warschawski’s work helped afford words to my feelings about this place.

Fragmentation as a Force to be Reckoned with

In the divided city of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, there is a memorial park for the Yugoslav partisans who fought the fascists during the Second World War. Once the most impressive of its kind in Yugoslavia, it has not been maintained since before the Bosnian War, beaten by the elements, overgrown with vegetation, and strewn with trash. I was amazed by how such a vast complex, perhaps too large for little Mostar, was in such total abandonment.

Though hoping to refrain from over-comparison, I can use the Mostar memorial to bring the patchy development I am seeing in Israel-Palestine into focus. While some only cry Jewish neglect in the underdevelopment of Arab locales in Israel and Jerusalem, I affix on my camera the lens of fragmentation. In Mostar, war tore apart the ethnically mixed city and turned it into two stunted fragments, one Croat and one Bosniak. The partisan memorial lies inside the Croat side, which I surmise would make it difficult for a Bosniak politician to campaign for its rehabilitation (an unlikely event to begin with, given the corruption and wrangling of Mostar’s politicians). Those among the Bosniak citizenry who would push to see the memorial revived probably believe others on their side of the city don’t see the point: why help the people who we fought a bloody war with? And for their part, Croat politicians and civil society also cannot muster the public momentum to save the memorial.

Unlike Yugoslavia, Israel and Palestine may have long only had more narrowly defined projects, whether Zionism, pan-Arabism, or Islamism. From the 1910s, Jews cobbled together trappings of a state in a context of being perceived acutely as outsiders by the local population. An insufficiently inclusive proto-polity descended into war with the indigenous people in a worldwide trend of decolonization. After the dust of war settled, the two continued to see each other as enemies. Arabs who remained within the Israeli-controlled side of ceasefire lines lived under martial law until 1966. Even socialist Zionists had had real war to deal with, and even Bedouins were viewed with suspicion. There was likely no room for nuance or idealism.

Suspicion and sociopolitical life not reaching all in the land have led to lopsided development. The Jews used the know-how and capital they brought with them from abroad for their own growth. We thus see the emergence of a landscape plagued with unequal infrastructure, schools, and social, political, and economic life. The power centers are largely an Old Boys’ Club, with military success a strong currency. And successive wars only cemented all of this!

Israel’s security buildup and advances in military technology make the occupation easier to maintain. Settlements in ’67 lands, once bastions for security and pragmatism, have become a formidable part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict landscape. And even now in 2015, one can see how Israel-Palestine is an unequally developed space. Some of the segregation and underdevelopment is self-driven by Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the Triangle, etc.… Some sure isn’t.

With some thought, it’s not so surprising that, given a thick history of unilateralism, there isn’t a culture of engagement and compromise here in Israel-Palestine, let alone making overtures. All issues are on the table and yet nonnegotiable. The deep gulf between leaders comes partly from them simply being accountable to their constituencies—Jewish and Arab communities that truly misunderstand each other because of long-running fragmentation and fear.

And one can see strong tendencies of delegitimizing the other side turning inward. Take how anti-normalization is sometimes a raging force hurting Palestinians themselves. Similarly, many Israelis brand their leftwing compatriots as traitors, self-hating Jews, or out-of-touch. On both sides, people misperceive the other as not being a real partner, when in fact they themselves have given pitifully little thought and effort into genuinely cooperating. No one seems to realize that a partner isn’t found after long awaiting – that partners are made.

Gaza rockets, Israeli airstrikes, unequal development everywhere, claims of “apartheid,” and Israeli actions that indeed realize that lurking apartheid – all are surface-manifestations of a larger context of blaming, fighting, and delegitimizing rather than engaging. The fragmentation is omnipresent… it’s a debilitating force unto itself.

Whether in Bosnia-Herzegovina or Israel-Palestine, few are deluded to demand full integration and cooperation in the short-term. But who outside of society’s margins are taking those baby steps? Are those cautious steps gaining courage, creativity, and vision everyday? In such small countries, perhaps no one can be exempt from trying harder, smarter, and kinder everyday.

Reflections from a weekend of work in Susiya

Over a recent weekend, I joined dozens of Diaspora Jews invited to do practical work in the Palestinian village of Susiya: planting thyme, picking up trash, and leveling a bad road. There is a growing movement of Jews resisting injustice in Israel and Palestine in creative, energetic ways. It is inspiring to see how they are currently planning more, and bigger, solidarity trips with Palestinians in the West Bank. The following is me working through my thoughts during and since that weekend. 

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The hills, like a landmass floating in the sky.
The simple resilience of shacks and tents,
Honey bees, shorn sheep, a gaggle of geese.

They say we aren’t truly free till we all are.
How far away it all feels!
When one lousy road takes dozens of us,
Armed but with shovels, picks, and buckets.

Never have I stood face-to-face with a sheer lack of basic infrastructure imposed on others.

With a day’s work behind us, the sun’s begun setting.
Our thoughts are collectively asking: over already?
How much more could we do!
If our brothers and sisters lined their shoulders with ours?

The hills, they’re awash in gold now
As we find our places in a Kabbalat Shabbat circle.
Our bellies are empty, the desert wind is chilly.
But much more, a sense of privilege,
Practicing our Judaism and liberal values
In a land where it’s good to be Jews.

In our laps or piggybacked,
Palestinian children are among us, too.
As we break into song, a boy humorously shouts, Yalla, sing! Dance, dance!
And I think, such maturity to entertain!
But still, an endearing, undeniable innocence.

Some have said the Palestinians raise their children to hate. If you say I’m naive, then first come prove to me how this happens with ‘statistical significance’!

The following day comes, and we work some more.
And we discuss Jewish tenets that propel us to social justice.
“Oppress not a stranger, for we were strangers in Egypt.”
I’m eager to see my religious wellspring, admire and find pride in it.
But one of the small boys comes to alert, mustauten!

A settler has attacked a Susiya resident!
The timing as if to challenge us
As we were cupping our hands into the tributary to go forward right.

So many of us trudge through the rocks and weeds,
To donate our international, Jewish eyes.
Some of us surely puffed out our chests
As if to say: leave the stones, drop your saw!
The olive grove has deep roots here!

I stay behind, though, uneasy and wondering,
Do our protective actions entrench their sense of victimhood?

The police arrests the settler, and sure, part of me rejoices,
While part of me senses justice doesn’t come piecemeal.
Rather, it takes a deep reckoning
By societies to together determine its shape,
And build it together.

The Israeli and the Nakba

I spoke with a mixed Ashkenazi-Mizrahi Israeli as he worked through his thoughts of the past and present, about Israel and the Nakba. I tried to capture the depth of his introspection with some poetry.

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The conversations that don’t happen, as if dead on arrival,
Traveling in circles through the markings of a past reality.
The climate of taboo, turning knowers into self-censorers,
Hearts racing at ghosts, who linger because unseen.

He gets it, acknowledges the central question:
How does one explore another’s suffering when they don’t wish you well?
When your acceptance could fan fires of demonization?

He walks the streets of Haifa and Jaffa, nostalgic
About the what-could’ve-been, Jewish peoplehood integrated in a wider Semitic world,
Beirut, Damascus vitally interconnected with Jewish-Palestinian streets,
With a Tel Aviv that never rotted Jaffa away, but rather loved and married it.

A yellowing phonebook shows him vibrant shops of Levantine merchants, far and wide.
It’s but an artifact now, ever-eroding into sand and urban, industrial dust.

He ponders:
Does the suffocation of his tiny country have century-old roots?
To kibbutzniks who toiled for egalitarian utopias,
For something more progressive than Europe herself, at the interest-bearing cost
Of connecting not with the indigenes, sewing the seeds of a War of Independence?

The flow of this history perhaps so inexorable
That even his Eastern grandmother stowed away her name,
Which if cherished could’ve instilled in his father a curiosity to know his neighbor.
A project that washed away the bridges to Iraq, Yemen, and Palestine itself,
Ensuring the apple falls not so distant from the tree.

Engaging Palestinian youth in Israel

Below, I write about Mohammed, who is responsible for the programs and projects of the Hanoar Haoved VeHalomed movement in Tamra, a Palestinian city in Israel. He is also the head of civil service volunteers in the Arab sector of the movement. 

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At age 27, Mohammed’s energy and drive are contagious. Perhaps the many years he has spent educating and inspiring Arab Israeli youth and engaging with Jewish Israelis have blown away any of his shyness about who he is and what he is trying to do.

It’s fascinating that he’s come to possess such a surety, given how his family was forced from their villages in 1948, barred from returning, and settled in Tamra – a city that would become part of Israel and fifty to sixty percent refugee-descended.

He told me how growing up, his father often educated him about his family’s past. During the Lebanese Civil War, his father funneled weapons from Jordan and Iraq, through the West Bank, to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Clearly, he had no shortage of being told about the Nakba, resistance, and other elements of the Palestinian narrative.

With his father in jail during his childhood, he was much like many youth in Tamra, hanging out on the streets, smoking, and throwing stones. He told me, not so shamefully, that he had thrown stones at Jewish-driven cars, too. Upon this trajectory, one day he got into a fistfight with two Arab youth in which he was overpowered. Luckily, they withdrew their blows on the condition that he would give their movement, Hanoar Haoved VeHalomed, a chance. This street encounter would change the course of his life.

Eleven to twelve years later, he organizes the Hanoar movement in Tamra, which now counts 1,200 Arab youth in its ranks from having been three to four hundred when he joined. He recounted how his father was furious he would ever participate in a movement affiliated with the Jewish Labor Party in Israel. His father even chased him around the house brandishing his shoe, a show of deep disdain in Arab culture. Eventually, his father permitted him to continue on the condition that he would never come back saying he had made a mistake.

Since then, he has come to respect the path Mohammed chose for himself. He saw how Mohammed became a new person, his commitment day in and week out, truly helping society over the long haul. Mohammed told me about deriving meaning from connecting youth with each other, allowing them to stimulate each other’s drive for success. Seeing such tangible results from Mohammed, his father now directs youth to him, encouraging them to check out his son’s movement!

Mohammed now nurtures the identity of Palestinians in Tamra – as members of society not more Israeli than Palestinian, and vice versa. They are striving to become Palestinian-Israelis committed to both the Israeli state structure and the Palestinian identity.

I was impressed by the transformation of both Mohammed and his father – and also by Mohammed’s unwavering belief in change as process. People in armed resistance can come to believe in coexistence and a shared future with ‘the enemy’, like his father did. The youth on Tamra’s streets can one day lead and build movements, like Mohammed did. His conviction of change as long-term process seems to sustain two of his traits: calm patience and a “march on!” resilience. In a country where narratives are clashing in a small space, he still has the patience to remind Jews and Palestinians that knowing each other’s collective traumas actually facilitates communication. Similarly, he sees Bibi Netanyahu’s new government as a time not to despair, but to redouble efforts for furthering Jewish-Arab cooperation and keeping youth focused on their futures.

Mohammed’s conviction that people and society can change will remain imprinted in my mind for a long time.