< Reflection Two: Israeli Army Segregates Us By Religion >
July 2017 Delegation | Interfaith Network for Justice Delegation
Co-Sponsored with American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship
Read reflections from this delegation:
- HOME: Interfaith Network for Justice in Palestine Delegation
- REFLECTION 1: Palestine (In and Out)
- REFLECTION 2: Israeli Army Segregates Us By Religion
- REFLECTION 3: Shine a Light
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Overview: The second collection of reflections from the Interfaith Network for Justice Delegation to Palestine/Israel begins with Melissa N.'s recounting of the group's visit to Hebron where Israeli Defense Forces soldiers segregated the delegates along religious lines. A video of the encounter follows.
This collection also includes two Instagram stories: Elizabeth W. and Eric E. reflect on the delegation's homestays in Dheisheh Refugee Camp; and Farah E.-J. shares photos from a visit to the Palestinian village of Lifta.
The collection is rounded out by several reflections from Sherly F.,
Elizabeth W.'s powerful list of daily reminders; and Melissa N.'s meditation on the WALL.
“No Muslims Allowed” | Melissa N. - Dorchester, Massachusetts
Hebron, West Bank, Palestine. We came to bear witness to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I thought I had a grasp on the “situation” but without experiencing Hebron first-hand how could I have imagined the level of relentless discrimination and abusive military conduct?
In less than two hours we witnessed a constant barrage of arbitrary yet deliberate harassment.
Some examples of what we saw:
From the first moment we try to walk down the street together we are stopped by a soldier.
“No Muslims allowed.”
“We are Americans.”
“NO MUSLIMS.”
“We are Americans.”
“Let me see your passports.” Another soldier shows up.
We are not Palestinians.
“It is separated by religions - this street is not for Muslims they must go the other way.”
Security? By segregation of religions? Our passports do not say our religion.
“If you go any further you will be arrested.”
We split up and meet up past the house that has been occupied by Jewish settlers. They are claiming to have bought one hundredth of a share in the building and therefore have rights to it. They walk about with heavy weapons hanging off their shoulders. They follow us to hear what our guide is explaining. Our guide welcomes them. He is fearless.
A young Palestinian boy chased off his bicycle by a white Israeli man in a white scull cap runs into our crowd crying. The man tries to take off with the bike. He clearly believes he has the right to do so. He doesn’t know that arch defender of human rights, Issa Amro, is our guide and Issa immediately calls out and demands the bike. In no time the Israeli army shows up and so does a religious Israeli man appearing out of a passing car to defend the perpetrator, an Orthodox Jewish Israeli, who admitted that it wasn't his but because the boy was riding on a Jewish only road it "might belong to a Jewish kid". We were all filming. I felt utter outrage for the abuse.
A Muslim man has already gone through the metal detector of the entrance to the mosque. He does so every day. Five times a day to sing the call to prayer. The Israeli soldiers know him. He is detained at a secondary checkpoint. He has to remove his belt. Maybe he will be late? The sun is beating down and the soldier is irritable.
We are returning to Jerusalem and we hear the unmistakable clatter of low flying military helicopters. Two of them headed back towards Hebron. We are frightened for what our friends might be experiencing. We find out that it is a Jewish holiday of remembrance, of fasting. The Jewish Israeli people of Hebron want to visit a grave that is in an area restricted to them so the Palestinian residents of Hebron are on lock down for several hours until the Jewish people safely return to their homes.
All of this and much more was hard to "just witness".
VIDEO: Israeli Army Segregates Delegation Based on Religion
Israeli occupying forces in Hebron forcibly segregated our #JustFaith17 delegation according to religion. Muslim-American delegates were forced to separate from Christian-American and Jewish-American delegates.
This is the Israeli army US taxpayers support and sustain. US taxpayers give Israel over $3 billion in military aid every year to enforce separate and unequal treatment based on religion.
video produced by Jewish Voice for Peace for Youth Against Settlements
Instagram Stories from Dheisheh Refugee Camp | Elizabeth W. and Eric E.
The delegation stayed overnight in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp, near Bethlehem. Dheisheh is home to more than 15,000 Palestinian refugees from 45 communities in what is now Israel.
The residents of the camp continue to insist on their internationally recognized right to return to the homes and the lands that Israel expropriated after expelling more than 750,000 Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe).
Friday Prayers | Sherly F. - Stony Point, New York
Last Friday, I woke up and decided to go to Friday prayers it sounds simple enough, but in occupied Jerusalem where nothing is ever that simple or easy. In order to just get off the street I was on I had to go through an Israeli military checkpoint then another and another. If that wasn't enough I spent most of my time at the mosque feeling afraid that at any minute something could go wrong and we would all be in danger.
As uneasy as I felt I never felt like we shouldn't be there or that I wanted to leave. This is true religious persecution to be made to feel uneasy in one of the holiest places in the world the third holiest mosque in Islam.
I am happy I went, happy we are safe and ashamed that people have let things get this far. We have a serious moral, social and spiritual responsibility to the Palestinians and the Holy Land and we are failing them.
Daily Reminders | Elizabeth W. - Davidson, North Carolina
The past nine days have been a stream of constant learning and immersive encounters with Palestinian and Israeli activists. We have had the rare opportunity to see areas of the country from the Jordan River to the Dead Sea, the village of Bil'in, and the future of Hebron, Ramallah, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem.
While meeting with leaders of 22 organizations, we've seen into the intricate woven fabric of civil society and learned from multiple perspectives of history, identity, and analysis.
This list is an interpretation of the daily tasks and hopes of those on the front lines of the resistance to injustice, working to end the occupation.
I learned from our trip leader Shakeel that in Islam, the most important expression of faith is through repeated, small actions.
To do (a list of #resistance actions across peoples & borders):
- Pick the grapes from the ten-year-old vines and count each one as a gift to share with the neighbors
- Watch the sunrise from the rooftop after surveying for the soldiers who raid your home before twilight
- Wait three more hours for the checkpoint to open to Jerusalem only ten miles away and a world apart from your home deeper in the West Bank
- Make maramiyeh (sage) tea with a little extra sugar to calm the body and sweeten the heart
- Tell the Israeli government you refuse to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces and prepare to go to military prison for indefinite terms
- Look over the cliff at the Israeli settlements being built on your great-grandfather's land while refusing to hate those who dwell there
- Organize protest with the elderly and religious to remember the Yemeni babies stolen from their families in history of racism against Mizrahi Jews
- Give a tip to the Eritrean asylum seeker cleaning houses to keep her children fed
- Take Shabbat (sabbath) as a time to reflect on art and social change
- Invest in set of drums for next Friday's demonstration where the children will lead and beat and sing to take down the wall
- Eat bread to your fullest contentment
- Milk the goats and have a conversation with God and remind yourself this is for the long haul
- Go to court for the 16th year in a row to defend the land where your blood and your bones trace back centuries
- Attend the neighbors' interracial wedding celebration and offer to help them build their home
- Invent a story of hope even if it is a lie to keep going tomorrow
- Endure being stopped and strip searched on the street without blaming yourself
- Tell your life story and your family history to a group of US activists hoping they will share with family and friend and advocate to their government to stop funding your oppression
- Write a letter to end child prisons
- Read Edward Said, Paulo Freire, Angela Davis and Ilan Pappé for the youth book club in the refugee camp
- Invite your neighbor whose son was shot by police over to dinner and make maklouba with chicken
- Walk the children in tow to school through the checkpoint with armed soldiers surrounding them
- Water the roses and hope they last through the next season before being uprooted by demolition
- Read the news in Hebrew and Arabic for the differences in interpretation of your arrest last weekend
- Explain to the person on Facebook that Jews of color exist and have Arab, North African, and East African heritage
- Make friends with the mail deliverer who noticed you've received many letters from across the world for your activism
- Teach your four-year-old to chant for freedom and self-determination
- Find water to replace the shut-off supply that you bought from Israel after it was harvested in the West Bank
- Learn to speak another language to communicate with the international community
- Paint a mural to remember the faces of the martyrs lost by police brutality against young men
- Look for demolition orders that may be hiding on your property
- Listen to your grandfather's stories as if they are woven in gold
- Return the bike to the Palestinian child stolen by an Israeli settler
- Find a way to Skype members of your family in Gaza while they are under siege with no electricity or control over their own cities
- Pray with the young men outside al-Aqsa mosque gathered peaceably in the streets by the thousands with prayer mats and cardboard and matching hats
- Close the windows when the soldiers throw tear gas near where your child sleeps
- Keep breathing even when the bombs are falling
- Find out the history they never taught you in school
- Stay alive and fight and validate your own existence with every step
- Plough the field and don't look back
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Ramallah and Al Aqsa | Sherly F. - Stony Point, New York
Last week, we took a trip to Ramallah that was both fun and emotionally draining. One Palestinian organization in particular that helps with prisoners sometimes as young as 12 was the hardest meeting to sit through thus far.
We then had to go to a check point in order to get back to Jerusalem. When we got back on the bus we heard news that Israel had closed the Al Aqsa Mosque once again because someone had flown a Palestinian flag from the rooftop. There were clashes in the street and as we neared our hotel we had to take an alternative route because the street was closed.
As we got of the bus we could here sound bombs and rubber bullets being fired just down the street from us. I started crying in grief, despair, anger. Why are they doing this? Why is nothing sacred in the Holy land?
I feared for the young Palestinian men in the streets who would surely be looked at by the Israeli military and police (and most of the International community) as the problem. I felt how unfair, unjust, and cruel this type of reporting/propaganda is, to blame the victim on top of everything else is just too much.
I think the Israeli government thinks these type of tactics will persuade Palestinians and their supporters to give up but it only emboldens us. If I was 99.99% percent pro Palestinian before, today I signed up to be a full member of the Palestinian struggle.
Lifta: An Instagram Story | Farah E.-J. - Columbia, Missouri
The WALL | Melissa N. - Dorchester, Massachusetts
Some impressions of a tour that tore my heart, of a talk that was fierce, of a leader that asked us to build bridges and another look at the WALL.
Zochrot. Omar is remembering.
He draws the route on the backside of his hand.
the WALL: Is it time?
The remembering of Lifta
Quickly remember because Lifta is now a name in parentheses and someone who cannot bear that there is a past that is connected to an unholy act has rubbed the Arabic name off the sign that points to a school, a fig tree, almonds, pools where the animals drank, and a mosque. Where the people who lived in that and that and that and that house prayed.
Somewhere out there there are two graves.
the WALL: Are we there yet?
Lifta has a new Hebrew name. Mei Naftoah conspires to erase the truth.
Someone is trying to change the story of the town into a reserve, a nature park. It does not matter what lies are told. I remember so many lies that were told.
Quickly remember the route before there is a mall and luxury homes.
Map the route that will lead to safe return
It must be in there in the stories of this town, this village, this hillside where the violence made empty these homes.
the WALL: People will never forget how you made them feel
It is in the remembering. Despite the denial, denial, denial reparation, of residency, of this basic human right to go home. To save the key to your house, to go away and lock the door and know you can come back any day you damn please and find things just the way you left them.
It is in the remembering that there is a possibility of return.
And when the systematic stripping stripping of it all makes nothing to return to?
the WALL: Life will find a way
I will call today Right of Return.
With emphasis on the Return of Dignity.
Gratitude for Zochrot, Badil, Kairos and Banksy.
"The Room" | Sherly F. - Stony Point, New York
It felt like something out of a bad cliche spy movie. I walk up to the passport control window super nervous on the inside but trying to hold it together on the outside when the passport control lady barely looks at my passport before she asked me if I was with the group. I answered yes and was swiftly taken to a holding room where most of the members of my group were being detained. I ended up spending two hours in that room but that was definitely luckier then those who spent most of the day there.
It just felt like a tactic to intimidate us more than security measures. I felt irritated but glad I did not have to catch an 11hr flight back home. This “un-welcome” to Israel now seems like an appropriate warning for what I've felt since.
We invite delegation participants to comment on and react to the experiences they have during our Israel/Palestine delegations in written Trip Reflections.
Individual delegates contribute pieces to these reflections. As such, reflections are not comprehensive accounts of every meeting or experience, but impressions of those things that most impact individuals. Submitted reflections may be edited for clarity or brevity. Trip reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Interfaith Peace-Builders, American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, trip leaders, or delegation partner organizations. We hope you enjoy reading and we encourage you to share these reflections with others.
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