Immediately after I arrived at Damascus Gate, I felt swallowed up by the situation. A Palestinian crowd was cheering wildly for young men who managed to sneak and dash through Israeli police lines, before they were grabbed and lugged away. An older Palestinian man tried to negotiate his entry with a cop, who shouted with more fury than I’d ever seen and shoved him away with the barricade, which landed on his toes.
I never anticipated my heart would sink multiple times in a few minutes like that.
Thus protected by police, Jewish teenagers joined shoulders and danced in an aggressive, ecstatic circle. They danced while enveloped in a Palestinian atmosphere of tension and protest. Allahu Akbar and Am Israel chants collided like tidal waves of opposed oceans.
I headed into the Old City to find a location to record potential racist slogans or vandalization, to help collect evidence of incitement and violence in order to reroute the nationalistic Jerusalem Day march for coming years. I saw how a policeman, speaking in Arabic, guided Palestinian youth into side alleys. It almost felt gentle, this same-time protective measure for and civil rights violation of Old City Palestinians.
After some time, the Jewish marchers entered through the Damascus Gate, let in by the police in groups. I stood by a passage roofed like a tunnel, which was eventually filled with a large group of teenagers led by their rabbis. In turn they swelled the tunnel with prayer and song. A beautiful brotherhood reigned in that tunnel, though a suspect chauvinism still floated around them, produced by those same boys moments before.
The masses continued to stream in, making that ancient Old City artery brim; spectators like me had to paste their backs against the walls to avoid collision.
I recorded. Felt numb by the onslaught of noise and bullish power. Maneuvered to not be stepped on. Repeated.
Like that, I pondered the deeper, saddening truth of that spectacle for more than two hours. Regardless of overt racism being in check during this year’s Jerusalem Day march, the structural violence was palpable. That day, a heavy mob invaded another community’s space and sense of self. And it may continue to do so for years if not decades.
I continually contemplated, where does such force come from? I suspect it has to do with the march’s sheer blindness. The intoxication of having each other, together forming the eternal people now vindicated.
The pride of ‘48 and ‘67 being perpetuated with little awareness of the harm befalling the other.
Why does this energy have to swell every inch of the Old City like that, pulsating against the doorsteps of the people who live there? I long to meet people who can help me answer such questions.
The Medford Pact 