< Reflection Two: A Village Remembered, a Village Saved >
July 2016 Delegation | Militarization and Paths to Justice
Read reflections from this delegation:
- July 2016 Delegation Home
- “... and the people bloom again”
- A Village Remembered, a Village Saved
- We See Oppression
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Overview: This second collection of reflections from the delegation begins with co-leader Sydney Levy's searching inquiry spurred by a moving visit to the Palestinian village of Lifta which was ethnically cleansed in 1948. A reflection from Jacob Ertel and a poem by Sararosa Davies also feature Lifta.
An overnight stay in Dheisheh Refugee Camp near Bethlehem forms the basis for the next set of reflections from Sherry Altman, Jacob Ertel, and Rodney Cuny. An incredibly powerful poem by Sararosa Davies ties the group's stay in Dheisheh with her earlier experience in the neighboring illegal Israeli settlement of Efrat.
This digest is rounded out by a strong set of reflections on the delegation's visit to the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh. Alison Glick shares life lessons passed on from Manal Tamimi and the people of the village; Jacob Ertel's piece traces the villages path of resistance; and Karl Anderson critiques the role of foreign aid and international NGO's in Palestine.
Finally, Rodney Cuny and Khefri Azure offer insights into additional experiences. Read on for each of these powerful voices.
Seven Years a Settler | Sydney Levy – Oakland, California
Seven years I lived in Jerusalem.
Seven years in which I was a settler and I did not even notice it.
Seven years in which time and again I used to buy falafel sandwiches from a Palestinian kiosk just across the dorms at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
I never thought to ask whether I was settling someone else's land all those seven years.
I never thought to ask where was the falafel man coming from until now.
Today, I learned a little bit of his story.
The picture you see is from the door of what was the family house of the falafel vendor.
His family house in the village of Lifta, a village that was, like hundreds of others, to disappear during the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe the made possible the birth of a Jewish state.
Today, I learned that his family's name was Abu Leil. His falafel stand was in walking distance from his family's house.
Walking distance.
But he was never allowed to return.
I cannot begin to imagine the devastation of being robbed of his property, his land, and his past. His history was erased. He was erased. He was just a falafel vendor by the side of the road.
This Jewish privilege that allowed me to live without asking questions, that allowed me to live in blissful ignorance turning my eyes away from the suffering of others standing in front of me--this privilege is all too common among Jews inside and outside of Israel.
This ignorance must stop. This pretending-like-everything-is-ok must stop.
Do not look away. Take a look at the house in the picture.
This house is now deserted.
This house has been made uninhabitable by Israeli authorities who purposefully cut a hole through the roof to make the house unlivable and to weaken the very structure of the roof itself.
This house is now inside an Israeli nature park where Israelis get to hike and enjoy nature, paying little attention to the silence witness of the abandoned buildings of the village of Lifta.
And yet, today I saw a young Palestinian man collecting fruits and spices from among the wild vegetation in Lifta. His family was from Lifta. He could not have been old enough to be alive on 1948.
But the flavors and the smells of his place of origin called him to come back.
Lifta is only one of many Palestinian villages which have been erased from memory but refuse to go away. But Lifta is the perfect example of the role of the Nakba in the creation of the state of Israel: the Israeli Knesset and the Israeli High Court of Justice sit atop the agricultural lands of the village of Lifta.
As I spend the night inside a refugee camp in the West Bank, I recommit myself to never again allow my privilege drive me to blindness in the face of injustice.
Never again.
With admiration for the resilience of the refugees waiting to return and with gratitude towards Zochrot for its persistent work reminding Israeli society that the Nakba is real and that return is possible.
Lifta | Jacob Ertel - New York, New York
You can see the new express railway from anywhere in Lifta. It stretches beyond the length of the ruins, hundreds of feet above ground, before burrowing into an opening in the side of a mountain. This project is set to be completed in 2017 and will connect Tel Aviv to West Jerusalem.
Lifta was one of the first villages destroyed in the Nakba by the Irgun. Unlike many other such villages, its ruins still exist today, perhaps in part because of the beliefs of Israelis who feel connected to the area since populating it in the 1950s (the period of military rule).
Zionist graffiti is everywhere. One old home is tagged with "Death to Arabs," while a roadblock above ground hails the Jewish Defense League. We walk up to a sign declaring Lifta an historic nature reserve. It reads in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, but the Arabic is clearly scratched and Jewish stars are scrawled all over. The Jewish National Fund has spoken in Lifta.
The pool that orthodox Jews believe to be Mai Naftoah is shallow and polluted. Several settler families and other Talmudic students pace around the area, occasionally shooting us a suspicious glance. We walk from the pools along the same path that Palestinians fled out of Lifta in 1948.
All of the existing houses in Lifta have circular holes on their roofs. When Palestinians attempted to exercise their right of return in the years following the Nakba, Israeli authorities came to cut a hole in each structure. Because these houses are made of stone and mud and rely on the pressure of their arches to maintain their structural integrity, the holes ensure that over time these houses will weaken and eventually crumble. As Ariel Sharon enjoyed saying of the occupation, "time is on our side." Occupation is exercised through infrastructure.
Lifta | Sararosa Davies - Saint Paul, Minnesota
Here in the ruins
the buildings ache with ghosts
and to remember them
is to see sabr growing on its own
between stone buildings,
to see a people
scattered across hills and checkpoints
like glass.
If they can come back,
they see settlers in the village spring
and layers of chip bags and soda cans
warming in the sun. Settler boys, not slinging guns
over their shoulders yet,
have swimsuits draped over pale skin.
If they can come back,
the villagers see their family homes
crumbling under the sun,
tiles with blue flowers
covered in dust. Outside walls with graffiti
scream, "Death to Arabs"
and if they can come back,
there's no welcome mat,
just the smell of dirt and fig trees
and the sweat of hikers walking by.
Lifta is a ghost town with its people still living,
and those who can return recognize that
by cultivating the trees. In these places and their destruction,
everything becomes overgrown.
A Bump in the Night | Sherry Altman - Ithaca, New York
On Day 3, we are meeting leaders of an organization that serves youth and women of Dheisheh Refugee Camp, a large camp outside of Bethlehem that has been in existence since 1949. That night some of us are invited to stay overnight with a family. I am excited and a bit anxious.
The day before, I had seen Israeli soldiers harassing a Palestinian man at the Damascus gate of the old Jerusalem wall. And I have heard many frightening stories about soldiers coming in the night to arrest and detain people, including children. As our group tours Dheisheh, I ask one of the volunteers guiding us through the lane whether the Israeli soldiers come there. He answers yes, on a regular basis, about every 3 or 4 days. I have trouble completely understanding his English, but he conveys to me that they are often tear gassed.
That night, when I am staying with the family, I wake up to lots of dogs barking furiously. I hear a door open, then slam. I hear a man yell, and another man down the street yell. My heart is racing, and I’m wondering what’s happening. The dogs continue to bark for a while. Finally, the noise subsides and all is calm. I never found out what the noise was – I didn’t want to ask.
The next morning, when we reconvene with people from the service group we had met the day before, a woman reports that these abductions happen so regularly that she doesn’t even wake up at night.
Dheisheh Refugee Camp | Jacob Ertel - New York, New York
Editor’s Note: We’ve used initials below to protect the identity of the speakers
S’s returned to Dheisheh from Italy last month. His 16-year-old brother had been shot in the leg six months ago at a peaceful protest. The wound had gotten bad enough to start causing nerve damage. Despite the reputable Israeli healthcare system, S's brother was treated so poorly in the Israeli hospital that they would not operate on him. Due to a series of connections (his friend worked for UNRWA and has an Italian partner), S and his brother were able to travel from Dheisheh to have the operation. After five months, his brother has no feeling in his feet. S and others expect he will be arrested again soon, as his name is blacklisted and IDF incursions into Dheisheh are routine.
While in Italy, S made it a priority to practice English while he took care of his brother. He's currently in his second year studying Sociology at Bethlehem University (like me, his favorite writer is Marx). He is 21 years old. He is behind in school because he spent two years for throwing a stone at an armed IDF soldier during a protest. We talk about the claustrophobia of Dheisheh, BDS, and the PFLP. It makes me happy to see him grin when I tell him about the BDS movement on college campuses (despite our agreements on its limitations), and how the discourse really is shifting. "It might not be 10 or 15 years," he tells me, "but we will be free."
Dheisheh was created by UNRWA in 1949 as a refugee camp, and has remained this way since. Space works in unique ways at Dheisheh Despite being located in Area A, those in Dheisheh carry green ID cards to indicate their refugee status. This means that even under Israeli military law (civil law only implies to Jews and Palestinian citizens in Israel), they have more restrictions on their movement than even Palestinians in Gaza. Dheisheh contains about 21,000 people within roughly one square mile. The water runs once every four days for one hour. Graffiti of political icons and murdered young men mark almost every wall of the camp. At one point in our walking tour, a large group of children chase down a young man and hug him. He has just been released from prison. We walk up to a rooftop next to a bombed-out house and look out upon the entirety of the camp. I don't believe I will ever be able to understand the feeling that people in Dheisheh must have when they are able to see settlements of tens of thousands of people expanding over occupied land, while they are corralled into one square mile.
For those I spoke to at Dheisheh, the notion of a refugee camp is intentionally politicized, as it describes a temporary situation. M, a member of a community organization named Laylac, explains to us that "refugee" is political exception. When he shows us the house that has been bombed below the roof, he tells us that they can keep bombing, but Palestinians will continue to rebuild. Yet despite this, he has a greater attachment to the sea, which he has never been allowed to visit, than he does to Dheisheh A temporary situation.
At dinner, M's mother expresses a similar sentiment. One member of the group asks her what she would do if her right of return were finally recognized. Perhaps she will work the land, she says. Perhaps she will build a house with her family. Perhaps she will do nothing. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, she says, because she knows she will be free.
Dheisheh Refugee Camp/Efrat | Sararosa Davies - Saint Paul, Minnesota
Maya takes us to her roof before bed
and tells us that the settlement across the valley is Efrat.
Its lights glare at us and I remember years ago
hands up my skirt and my host brother saying
that his army unit kept the Palestinians in check.Maya offers us coffee and water,
tells us that the soldiers threw tear gas
into her home a couple days ago and I remember crying
into my mom's shoulder telling her that an Israeli boy
had done something I didn't have the words for.Maya says she hasn't been home
to Minnesota in months and that the soldiers
use the camp as a training spot.
She lists those who have been hurt
and I remember my mind healing.
residual pain still lingering in my shoulders.Maya says that it continues on
and that when her cousin was taken to prison
his dad said we will see him in our dreams
and I remember how long it took me to heal.Maya told me that she hopes the settlers saw
the refugee camp lights during Ramadan
and I remember being in Efrat, surrounded by darkness,
using some distant lights across the valley
to bring myself into my body again.
Growing Up Too Soon in an Unfair World | Rodney Cuny – Phoenix, Arizona
It’s taken me a few days to process and think of some of the things that I have experienced and encountered. Went through the refugee camp Dheisheh today. Reminded me very much of the slum areas of Caracas or Mexico City, but much worse. The children were so cute, so rambunctious and curious of us, yet so innocent. Children just like anywhere, unaware of the world around them outside the camp. Many destined to spend the rest of their life where they are, not getting to experience life on the outside. Regularly terrorized along with their families by the IOF soldiers with their incursions into the camp. Many robbed of what should be a happy, carefree childhood. Forced to grow up too soon in an unfair world.
Life Lessons | Alison Glick – Silver Spring, Maryland
On our sixth day in Palestine we traveled to Nabi Saleh, a village of about 600 people situated northwest of the West Bank city of Ramallah. Fig and olive trees dot the terraced hills of the village, some having graced the ancient slopes for centuries. The village is home to the Tamimi clan, a large extended family that has had its roots here for generations. Several members of the Tamimi family hosted us over night: Manal, Nariman, Bassem and their sisters and children. Virtually all are members of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC), a network of villages that coordinates support for farmers protecting their land, prisoners needing legal aid, and outreach to Israeli and international activists.
The mid-1970s saw a turning point in the life of Nabi Saleh. The Jewish settlement of Halamish was established on village land, and while a court battle brought a temporary return of most of the land initially confiscated, within a few years 150 acres of land were gobbled up by the illegal settlement. In 2008, the settlers set their sights on the precious village spring. Farmers tending their fields near the spring were violently attacked by settlers and chased away under the watchful eyes of Israeli soldiers. If the village farmers were unable to work the land they could lose it to the Israeli state, which, under an “absentee” property law, could confiscate it if it lay fallow for three years.
By December 2009, the villagers decided they’d had enough and after Friday prayers one week marched toward the spring to take a stand for their land and for their dignity, and against the four-decade-old occupation. Repelled by tear gas and rubber bullets, they never made it to the spring. But the march was the first of weekly protests that were soon joined by progressive Israelis and international solidarity activists.
Since then, the toll exacted by the occupation authorities has steadily risen. Army raids on the village have increased in frequency and scope, with hundreds, including many children, swept up into prisons and the Kafkaesque Israeli military court system. The violent response to the unarmed protests has stepped up also, with hundreds of injuries from rubber bullets, live fire, and tear gas. Countless tear gas bombs are let loose on the village streets and in houses in a single day, starting fires in homes and sickening young and old alike with various chemical agents, some of which are known and others whose properties and long-term effects are still unknown. Some of the latest weaponry used against the unarmed villagers includes a tear gas cannon that can fire 64 canisters at a time. An even newer model fires a barrage of 200 gas missiles at high velocity, leaving streaks of orange sparks in their wake as they scream across the village.
One of our hosts for the day, Manal Tamimi, observed, “It is like our Fourth of July, except with tear gas.”
Manal is a petite woman in her early forties, with crystalline green eyes that gaze directly from under her colorful hijab (head scarf). She is a mother and an activist, and was involved in the first intifada in the late 1980s, the tactics of which the PSCC has adopted and crafted to this new reality. She did much of the speaking during our stay, explaining the history of the protests and the Israeli response.
“At first, we hid our children from the protests, sending them to other villages or homes farther from the center of town to try and protect them,” Manal explained, her voice at once searching and confident; its tone reminded me of the voices of other mothers I’ve known, grappling with parenting issues and trying to figure out what’s best for their children, like parents everywhere.
She continued, “But then we thought to ourselves, ‘what are we teaching our kids?’ “We don’t want to teach them to run away from their problems; we want to teach them how to confront them.”
She paused and looked out over the group of Americans gathered in front of her. “So we taught them how to observe the direction of the wind in order to escape the tear gas. We taught them how to locate snipers and the best way to run from live ammunition.”
She spread her calloused fingers in front of her, taking us in.
“We know we must teach them to break the barrier of fear that the Israelis want us to feel,“ she said. “We must teach them to control fear and not let fear control them.”
Life lessons in occupied Palestine.
Nabi Saleh | Jacob Ertel - New York, New York
From Nabi Saleh one bears witness to what seems like almost the entirety of the occupation, all at once. The camp is split between Areas B and C, though it also overlooks Area A. Directly in front of the village is a settlement, new since 2009. Its swimming pools and trees are visible to everyone in the camp, no more than a mile away. A confluence of cranes and tall buildings stand off in the distance. It is the city of Rawabi, which since about 2007 has served as a microcosm for neoliberal development in Palestine.
From the hilltop on which I am standing, it seems impossible to capture this image and all that it entails in a picture or video. I point my iPhone camera at such an angle so as to frame the settlements, Rawabi, and the array of visible checkpoints within the backdrop of a set of Nabi Saleh's Palestinian flags, and realize that there is no way I will be able to convey what I have seen here when I return to the US. The village lives in the middle of the most violent crossroads of the occupation, and the constant denial of movement means that the Tamimi family (the predominant family in the village) cannot look anywhere outside without seeing the warped and manipulated landscape.
My eyes jump to the collection of US-made tear gas canisters on the table when we enter the Tamimi household. A centerpiece. The Tamimi family has been practicing an extremely high-risk form of non-violence since 2009, when Israel allowed for the development of the settlement on the adjacent hill. Every Friday the family protests, and every Friday they are met with tear gas, rubber bullets, and even live ammunition. Children and older women have died due to gas inhalation. The protests do not end on the street: they come home. Often IDF soldiers will come to the village and shoot gas canisters from sun up to sun down. In the collection of video footage, the gas is so thick that it becomes a blanket of fog coating the entire area.
More than 200 people have been killed since 2009, including over 40 children under the age of 18.
Steven Salaita was right - there is a sick, even psychosexual element to the IDF's routine warfare against Palestinians, and perhaps especially so towards practitioners of non-violence like the Tamimis.
The smirks on the soldiers' faces as they wake up a 12-year-old child to take him to jail; the breaking of elbows; the kill shots from point blank range; the twisted irony of the water cannons, fired gallons at a time, into a camp regularly denied access to their own water.
The residents of Nabi Saleh have not protested since Ramadan. The IDF has been able to predict their movements with too much ease. Following the example of the First Intifada (in which many of the older residents participated in), the Tamimis tell us that they practice non-violence because they are resisting to live, not to die. They are currently taking a break in order to make new plans and re-evaluate tactics in the face of increased Israeli aggression since October 2015. At the same time, they insist that while for many of them such an overall tactic undergirds a moral commitment, it is ultimately a question of strategy and effectiveness. The occupied have a right to resist, violently if they choose, and this is codified under international humanitarian law.
Yet at the same time, one of the most horrifying aspects of the occupation is that the violence inflicted has no clear correlation to direct action. It is constant and ongoing. Even since pausing their protests, the Tamimis are regularly harassed, a tear gas attack just yesterday while hosting another delegation. Even when the Tamimis pause from producing the theater of violence for the rest of the world, they continue to endure it, and somehow manage to carry on with hope.
Several of the Tamimis explain to us that their struggle is not against Jews, but the Zionist project. How incredibly unfair that such a justification is now required, that resistance to children choking in a haze of tear gas has to be rationalized for western liberals. Resistance, by any means, is justified under occupation.
Partners Not Patrons | Karl Anderson – Washington, DC
Palestine experiences not only the material military occupation of the Israeli military but also the ideological and economic occupation of capitalism.
We’ve met with a variety of organizations and individuals throughout the delegation, from LAYLAC to the PSCC, and they have nearly all recounted that foreign NGOs have infiltrated Palestinian political, social and economic spheres. As families we met with in Nabi Saleh recounted, they have seen millions of dollars invested into various projects throughout their area- and the rest of Palestine- with no sustainable results. But this is not the goal of any of those I’ve met with: a member of the Tamimi family succinctly stated they want “not supporters, but partners.”
NGO’s are critical to the functioning of modern capitalism, as they allow for colonizers to redirect insignificant amounts of resources back to their peripheral territories. Their role as the mechanism for this flow cannot be overstated: a Charity Industry is critical in maintaining a smile on the face of capitalism, shielding it from any criticism that it does not care about the humanity of others.
Driving through the West Bank, there is an uncountable number of small, sometimes unkempt buildings with signs larger, or at least more visible, than the projects themselves bolted to the front declaring in no uncertain terms that the viability of “project x” was provided by the generous funds from “country/organization y”. Seeing these structures, and the signs in particular, the purpose is obviously clear: whitewash international complicity with the occupation by funneling large but ultimately insignificant amounts of cash into a project which looks nice on crisp paper in air conditioned offices but does nothing in the long term for those who directly experience Israeli apartheid.
Over 100 years ago, Oscar Wilde stated as much:
[People] find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this…it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.
They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it…Charity creates a multitude of sins…It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property.
Indeed, the NGO crisis in Palestine is not only a part of the problem but an aggravation of the Zionist project which created the conditions that they claim to be primarily addressing. The money gifted to these NGO’s, especially those coming from countries such as the US, Turkey, Russia, or the EU, who are directly profiting from the death of Palestinians even outside of Palestine itself, like in Syria, is horrifically hypocritical. If a single foreign NGO-or country- felt they wanted to legitimately partner with Palestinians to make their lives measurably better, they would immediately abandon band-aid projects and begin working on ending Israeli apartheid and occupation.
Ultimately, sustainable results will be those that end the military occupation, abolish Israeli apartheid both in reality and legality, and manifest the right of return. In other words, for any international NGO that would want to actually do something, anything, for Palestinians, they would immediately begin supporting BDS. Contrary to the arguments that pervade popular discourse, in the US and France particularly, these tactics are “the most passive political act that anyone can commit” as Kwame Turereminded us in 1967.
By participating in boycotts, divestment campaigns, and even the encouragement of sanctions of Israel until they comply with these three basic demands, we in the US and Europe are simply-utterly simply- saying that we will not have Palestinian blood on our hands.
Originally published on Karl's blog.
Feeling Good | Rodney Cuny – Phoenix, Arizona
Went through a former prison where Palestinians were housed. The stories that were told by a former inmate who related some horrific stories of inhumane treatment and outright torture in the prison were quite sobering. Man's inhumanity to man couldn't have been more evident today. The visit culminated with a presentation by some remarkable teenagers who were part of a child protection team. Such hope and resolve that they can and will build a future for themselves given the opportunity for a free Palestine. Left that meeting feeling good.
In Solidarity | Khefri Azure - North Bend, Washington
There’s a part of me that wants to glaze over all of the devastation to tell about what kept me personally centered and sane. I feel guilty for noticing and taking joy in the hooded crow, the laughing dove, the trees with fruits of fig, olive, almond and pomegranate. Full of wonder, I noticed the land in all its intricacies natural and unnatural— though you might not notice the difference without someone pointing it out.
I noticed the way harsh, unhealed hands have transformed this land into something that never should have been because “never again.” I won’t forget the caves stuffed with barbed wire or the refined watering system from the spring in Lifta, a still pool collecting garbage and ending parched. The stories of Nabi Saleh will keep me in this work, along with the smiles, friendship, and poems of their young women.
But what will happen with the boys too soon men? Unending trauma, leaving them in unending disconnection. Retelling their stories, revisiting their horrors. Boys, as young as six, tormented.
I am not blind to the way that the oppressors of this land have transformed every symbol of Palestinian culture into a cornerstone of their own existence, violently destroying everything, appropriating resources, and redefining geography to reflect another people: occupiers.
It is so hard to watch and yet watching is the only way for it to live in me, for me to live for them, in solidarity.
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