Now on a trip with Interfaith Peace Builders, my daughter had a chance to talk with people in a kibbutz near the walls of Gaza. Before she left for Israel and Palestine, I told her that she really needed to speak with Israelis who have experienced attacks because, as much as she sympathizes with the Palestinians, only hearing one side of the story won't get you very far.
She has stayed on the left of the political spectrum (I don't think talking to rabid right wingers would have helped much), but I think she has learned more about the Israeli point of view, including the way ordinary left-leaning Israelis manage to block out the Israel - Palestine conflict. As I said in a comment in a diary by The Troubadour:
My daughter blogged about the discussion she had with some gay Israeli friends while she was in Tel Aviv. One of the young men told her that he had essentially given up on the I/P issue -- he just wants to raise his child and live his life, and the I/P issues are so intractable he can't see a solution.
I think that your term "compartmentalized" is the very term my daughter used talking to us about this on the phone. These are liberal/progressive/leftist people who see no light at the end of the tunnel, so they avoid dealing with the issues at all.
It mirrors many American Jews, including my family. Until our older daughter and some Jordanian friends started really talking to us, refused to let us slide away from the topic, we managed to avoid thinking or talking about the realities of the occupation, the settlements and Gaza. Now we can no longer ignore the issues. But I have to say that it's incredibly painful.
From my daughter's blog:
Where: Sderot, Israel (on the border with the Gaza Strip) and Ramallah, the West Bank
Who: Pastor Avery, AFSC delegation, Nomika Zion, AFSC in Gaza, me
“I don’t believe we are human beings trying to find our way in a spiritual world,” says Pastor Avery, a member of Interfaith Peace-Builders’ African Heritage Delegation. “We are spiritual beings trying to find our way in a human world.”
He is sitting back, relaxed stance, loose legs and arms, all easy smiles and easy eyes, the kind that look right into me, a voice of smooth gravel that hits right at the meeting of my clavicle and ribs.
On Wednesday, Nomika Zion, a member of an Israeli urban kibbutz in Sderot, stands while the rest of us sit in her sunlight dappled living room; stacks of books, fruit-hued walls, paintings of melancholy women, a patio green with succulents and sparkly with mobiles.
She stands straight-backed but brittle, holding her arms tightly together, her eyes burning, pools of shiny wax about to spill. She tells us of her family, which means her community, which means her neighborhood, her town. She does not tell us which children are hers, which man her husband. They are all her children, the women are all her sisters and close friends, the men all family.
She tells us of the collective trauma they have experienced together, the constant fear during the ten years when Hamas militants across the Gaza wall - only 2 miles away - shot thousands upon thousands of rockets into Sderot. The alarms that would sound. The scramble to bunkers. To the ground. The wait to see where the rocket would hit. The fear for a child playing outside.
But Nomika never forgets her friends in Gaza. The ones she had before the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000, who used to come to Sderot and their neighboring towns to work and sell produce, and the ones she has made via phone and email since. “Of course, I knew we were never equal because they were still under occupation,” she says. “But we were friends.”
Nomika tells us of the Israeli politicians who swooped into Sderot over the years with their accompanying media to hear about the terror the Sderot community experienced. How they would shake her neighbors’ hands and promise protection. How the bombs they sent “in retaliation” would shake the very walls of her house and terrify her even more. How the rockets did not stop.
During the three weeks of Operation Cast Lead in 2008, Israelis celebrating the bombing of Gaza flooded her hometown to be spectators to the show, one telling the media that the sound of explosions was the best music he had ever heard.
Nomika founded “Other Voice” in Sderot because she cannot stand it anymore, because she believes there is another way, because she still talks to friends in Gaza who believe. “I think we have become addicted to war,” she says. “But these bombs were not for my protection. The politicians were not interested in my protection.”
She wrote a now famous article entitled “Not in My Name, and Not For My Security.” It is what I think of later on a hilltop when we stare at Gaza across the wall, baking under the afternoon sun.
On Thursday, our delegation video conferences from Ramallah with a group of young people in Gaza who work through the American Friends Service Committee to promote civic engagement and youth empowerment within their communities. I am listening to them speak about their projects, but I am also watching the screen as one young man spills his water and wipes it up with tissue. The handshake and kisses exchanged by friends sitting in the right corner of the conference table.
They are not even 60 miles away from us, but we cannot enter Gaza and they cannot leave; we cannot share a physical space. Yet they are the energetic and upbeat side of the cyber discussion. They are the ones who say, “We have a life, we are looking to create our own future. People are thinking we do not have anything but we want to change the situations we are living in.”
The co-leader of our group, Professor Mohammed Abu-Nimer, ends our meeting by thanking the youth: “Yesterday, looking at Gaza from Sderot I felt very depressed. Today, looking at Gaza from Ramallah, I feel much more inspired.”
Diary and photos by the talebearer
Links:
Not in My Name and Not for my Security
Other Voice
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In a comment somewhere on Daily Kos, I wrote about how much more comfortable I was about Israel when I was ignorant. It reminds me of Ronald Reagan when he said something about how nice things were "before there was a race problem," meaning, before America had to face its racism. Of course, there was always a race problem. Things weren't nice, they were just easier for those who were in power.
Similarly, what has changed for American Jews is not the actual situation in Israel and Palestine (though I do believe it's gotten worse under the increasingly right-wing Israeli governments). What has changed is that it is no longer easy to ignore the occupation; it is no longer easy to pretend that settlements on the West Bank, that Gaza doesn't exist.
The intifadas brought world attention to what was happening, but not lasting nor necessarily sympathetic attention. The more recent peaceful protests, the flotillas, and new media sources have begun to shift the world's view of the conflict, and have had a tremendous effect on American Jews. And there is also the generational change with many younger American Jews not feeling strong connections to Israel, and others, like my daughter, feeling those connections as a responsibility to bring about change and human rights for Palestinians.