Why Are We Witnessing a Genocide?-- March 19, 2024

Famine is imminent, according to the UN in today’s newspaper. Famine is defined as “20% of households have an extreme lack of food, 30% of children have acute malnutrition and at least two adults and four children (per 10,000) die daily” for lack of food.// To die of hunger is extremely painful, but small children who are starving do not have the energy to cry. To starve children is part of the plan to eradicate the Palestinian population in Gaza. How did the world let this happen? I think through a series of grotesque underestimates. First, Israel underestimated Hamas’ ability to strike a wound deep into Israel. Thus their Southern Command was not awake on October 7th; their soldiers were busy harassing Palestinians in the West Bank at hundreds of random checkpoints. Second, Hamas, eager to teach Israel a lesson that certain conditions were intolerable, underestimated the level of revenge and retaliation their action would provoke. They were used to being severely bombed after they fired rockets into Israel, but the bombs would stop eventually. They were also used to getting some results from taking hostages: for one Israeli soldier they got several hundred Palestinian political prisoners released from Israeli prisons.// Third, Israel underestimated Hamas’ ability to maintain a military resistance in Gaza once Israel started a ground invasion. Palestinians do not want this war, but neither will they accept the conditions of subjugation imposed by Israel, especially since 2007. Fourth, Hamas underestimated Israel’s drive to complete a Zionist dream of having all of the land from the river to the sea be exclusively for a Jewish State. Thus Israel cannot accept a permanent ceasefire until they are sure they have gotten rid of all the Palestinian inhabitants on that land. In 1948 they accepted a ceasefire before achieving their goal, and have regretted it ever since. Fifth, Israel underestimates the Palestinian drive for self-determination, freedom from occupation, and return to their ancestral lands. As settler-colonizers, they must rule by force, and no people’s will tolerate their subjugation forever. So, that’s how we got here. What is the way out? Today’s Associated Press article also addressed this question, quoting the World Food program country director: “It is still possible to turn this around, but there will have to be a ceasefire, and there will have to be massive amounts of food aid to flow consistently, and people need to have access to clean water and health care.”// Let’s look at this scenario. As said above, Israel will not agree to a ceasefire until they have accomplished their goal of ethnic cleansing, ie “getting rid of Hamas.” As for massive amounts of food aid, Israel has been blocking just such aid in order to starve the population, so why would they now agree to it? The same can be said of clean water and health care. These are life-saving measures, when the goal is to snuff out life. That is, if Israel is in charge of post-war Gaza. But, if Israel is not in charge, what nation or international entity will step up to deal with the almost total destruction of living spaces and provide anything life-saving in Gaza, when they have not done so yet? Will Palestinians be at the table? Will Hamas? it might be evident to anyone watching that Hamas has not been defeated by Israel’s powerful army and air force. I noted in the aforementioned newspaper article that it was a Hamas police officer who was coordinating the effective distribution of the arrival of the first food supplies to reach northern Gaza in 2 months.// Finally, where do WE go from here? What is the responsibility of US citizens who oppose the genocide and want a future safe for all Palestinians and Israelis? (Because Israel cannot be safe as long as it continues to pursue settler colonial goals.) In the short term, we must get our government to stop funding and arming the genocide. This can only be accomplished when the U.S. thinks its own security requires it to change course. That doesn’t look likely at the moment, but there are forces at work in the world that make the future unpredictable: climate catastrophes, other wars which could become nuclear, resulting migrations of people seeking safety or food. We don’t know, but we must act in every way we can imagine to save Palestine, ourselves and our planet. ## March 19, 2024 Please submit responses via email: Sherrill.hogen@gmail.com

Scattered thoughts from Gaza to Nablus to Christmas

Scraps of paper everywhere. Thoughts everywhere. Trying to comprehend genocide. Trying to bust through the lies, even though the truth is so painful. Have you turned away yet? Have the statistics numbed you? The total number of Gazan's killed, half of them children? The number of journalists; the number of hospital workers; the numbers from just one family. The range of buildings bombed including hospitals, mosques, shelters, schools, universities, apartment buildings - because there might be a nest of Hamas fighters hiding there. The kinds of deprivations forced on ordinary people: no water to drink, no toilet to flush, no flour mill or bread bakery (bombed), no safety anywhere. I know. I dson't read the lists anymore. I know what is on the lists. And I don't want to see another image of a 2 or 3 year old child's bloody face or of a mother embracing a body bag. Try to stay focused on this: The United States is funding and encouraging genocide. Israel was birthed by lies and the lies provide cover for its goal: take the land and expell the natives. Those whom you can't expell, you can kill or jail, or just starve, little by little for a while, until an opportunity presents itself to finish the job. Here is what I wrote to my local newspaper on November 9th, and which they have refused to print. Why Does Israel Attack Hamas? Who is Hamas? And why does Israel need to destroy Hamas, so much so that Israel is willing to kill thousands of civilians in order, they hope, to be rid of Hamas entirely and forever? Or is there another objective: to be rid of all Palestinians? What I have learned over the last 21 years of frequent visits to Palestine and Israel is that the answers to these questions are not easily available. Our media, which repeats Israel’s official answers, does not help us to understand the facts as Palestinians live them. Hamas came on the scene in Palestine in 1987 as an Islamist alternative to the secular liberation movement headed by Yasser Arafat. At first Hamas refrained from electoral politics but was gaining popularity by providing neighborhood centers, clinics and schools where such essential services were lacking. When they did get on the ballot in 2006, they won local elections all over Palestine: the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Everyone was taken by surprise. I think even Hamas was surprised. Certainly Arafat’s party was not expecting defeat, and the Western democracies were stunned. Their reaction was just as surprising: “No, no, no. They are a terrorist organization and cannot be allowed to win elections. Arrest them!” The international community, led by the US and EU, rejected the election results and supported Israel’s arresting of the elected candidates. But this was not so successful in Gaza. There, Arafat’s party, Fatah, was planning a military take over, but was preempted by Hamas. In a bloody coup Hamas kicked Fatah out of Gaza and has ruled it ever since. Hamas is a political, religious (Islamist) governing body that has an autocratic grip on the 2.3 million Gazans. (I don’t know how many of those civilians actually like Hamas or support it.) They have an army called the Qassam Brigades and seem to tolerate the presence of other armed groups, such as Islamic Jihad. I asked above why Israel needs to destroy Hamas. Yes, Hamas attacked Israel, killing innocent civilians along with many soldiers at several military bases. Such an attack cannot go unpunished, and Israel would have to show its citizens that they will be better protected in the future. But does the punishment require the blanket bombing of an entire population, the targeting of hospitals, schools, refugee camps and shelters? The whole world is horrified by these scenes and the huge death toll, plus the strangulation caused by cutting food and fuel to everyone. Doesn’t Israel see that they are losing the support of popular opinion, most dramatically in the Muslim world, but now in the U.S. as well? Why don’t they stop bombing and starving people and instead negotiate a settlement? Haven’t they won already? They have shown that they are more powerful than Hamas and they have the military support of the United States and its allies. I think the answer is this: the reason Israel will continue its genocide is because they want to be rid of all Gazans. Those they can’t kill with bombs, they will drive South into smaller and smaller areas where there are no resources to support life, and the few that do survive might accept living in Egypt in new refugee camps. Meanwhile, the Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem can be killed or driven out by the armed settlers, whose violence has been going on while we are riveted by Gaza. Whole agricultural villages have been evacuated by settler militias, and their homes demolished, their farm animals dispersed. The Israeli army has invaded the West Bank cities and refugee camps, shooting protesters and destroying roads and infrastructure. I have friends in the West Bank, and they tell me that nowhere is safe. They also say that they are not allowed on the major roads, their cities are cut off from surrounding areas by new checkpoints. It feels like this is part of a strategy to finish the ethnic cleansing of Palestine/Israel started in 1948 when more than half the population was driven from their homes, their villages leveled to the ground, in order to create an exclusively Jewish state. I would like to be proven wrong. I pray for a ceasefire to happen immediately, for humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, for settlers to be reined in by Israel instead of supported by the army. I call my Congresspeople and I stand on street corners to show my government that the carnage we are paying for must stop. Not in my name. No more violence. Violence only brings retribution. We all make mistakes, sometimes huge mistakes, but it is never too late to change. P.S. Not all Israelis are supporting the genocide, and many Israeli families of the hostages are calling for “Everyone for Everyone” meaning, all Palestinian prisoners should be freed and exchanged for all of the hostages. It is Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwansaa/New Years, and I don't want to celebrate. I have bought a few gifts, but can't utter the words, "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year", because there is nothing merry or happy about genocide. I do pray for you all to be well, and I pray for God to intervene in the hearts of politicians, generals and weapons manufacturers who believe killing, torturing, brutalizing is okay. I believe Jesus still weeps over Jerusalem.

The Horrors of This War and All Wars

I've not been writing, just trying to keep up with the news and the feeling of being overwhelmed with grief. But when I saw the photos of Palestinian men stripped of all clothes except underpants, handcuffed behind their backs and kneeling in the dirt - a lot of men of all ages, sizes and shapes, stripped of their dignity, on display before the world with nothing left to prove they are human beings, my outrage drove me to speak up. After these men lost their homes to the bombs, and maybe lost their wives and children under the rubble, after they were forced to seek shelter in a public school classroom with forty other people and share a toilet with 200 other people, and beg for food and be unable to protect their families as is expected of men...after all that, this. Nakedness. Israel knows that Arab men are very private with their bodies. That's why it choses this means of humiliation and uses it at checkpoints throughout the West Bank, making individual men strip down in front of everyone waiting: women, children, their own children. Not just to show who is in control, but to break the spirit. But it is not working. The men show no emotion but their silent faces say, "You cannot see into me. You cannot know me or what I am feeling right now. And that makes you a little afraid, because you know that what you are doing is wrong. Deep inside you know that, and it will haunt you." I took my shock at the photos of near-naked men in Gaza to the weeklky peace vigil in Greenfield. There I saw a Palestinian friend, and I told him of my horror. And he said, "This is not new. It happened in all the wars on Gaza before this one** and in Israeli prisons. It has happened to me." Oh. So it is just another weapon of war. I had forgotten about Abu Ghraib where American soldiers made Iraqi Arab men pile on top of one another - also naked. I think I am shocked now as I was then, because I forget how degrading war can be. I need to write to share with you the other things about this war that shake my belief in he goodness of humans. The gratuitous, numerous ways to make Gazans suffer, like having to leave their cars and walk the 10-15 miles towards a supposedly safer place. Like making a man abandon his wheelchair and walk through the checkpoint, even thogh he cannot walk. Like taking away water for drinking, for flushing the toilet, for washing a baby's soiled bottom, for menstrating women and girls.``Yesterday I saw a video of a hastily errected tent city that had forgotten to provide toilets, so the people were digging holes in the sand and trying to erect a canvass curtain around the holes, for privacy. Today I saw a video of that same tent city, or one just like it, in the pouring rain and at least six inches of water on the ground, no way to keep dry inside or outside the tents, and I thought about those holes-in-the-ground toilets... I make myself imagine living like this - cold, hungry, dirty, helpless and grieving loss of home, of loved ones, of all comfort and normalcy, and then having to find the energy to care for small children. I don't think I could do it. I ask God to help me to understand how some people can treat other people this way. But there is no understanding. I want it to stop. I want you to stop it. I want to believe it can be stopped. **Israel bombed Gaza in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, and twice in 2021.

GENOCIDE IN GAZA

Oct. 31 – I am returning to this page that I started about a week ago, couldn’t finish, and picked up again 3 days ago. It seems like each day of horror changes what I want to say, but can’t find the words for. I had counted out the vitamins I would need for 23 days, packed the gifts in the carry-on bag, along with a couple of things I had been asked to bring, and decided on which shoes to take for the olive picking days when the terrain would be rough and full of thorny underbrush. Everything was ready for the final packing when October 7 happened. I waited two days before writing my Palestinian friends asking if I could still come. Only their “no” could keep me away. Then the airline cancelled all flights into Tel Aviv, the olive picking program cancelled, and Israel closed all West Bank cities and roads. Had I already been there, I would not have been able to go anywhere and would have been a burden to my friends. I had plans, two months in the making, to be in Palestine from Oct. 12- Nov. 2. As in previous trips there, I hoped to hear and report on people’s personal stories of their lives under occupation, and their expectations for the future. My other motivation was to be with “my family” in Nablus, whom I hadn’t seen for four years. And now they and other close friends are in danger. For the first week, I felt an immense grief – not just for my friends but for the people of Palestine who are being murdered by the thousands. And for the fact that my government, using my money, is paying for this genocide at this very moment, bombing their homes and even their hospitals and places of shelter. This genocide is being justified because Hamas started the war, and committed atrocities killing 1400 Israeli Jews, most of them civilians. There are many facts we will never know about this attack by Hamas, but we do know that there are at least a 1000 Jewish families in grief and millions more in fear of another attack. Their sense of security is shattered, and their loved ones gone forever. Another thing we know is that this war started with a tank bursting through a fence. We know the fence was thought to be impenetrable and was meant to keep Palestinians living in Gaza from leaving Gaza. We know that Israel controlled the fence and its few points of entry and exit, and severely restricted who and what could pass in either direction. Some 18,500 day laborers were granted permits to work inside Israel but not to live there. Some 400 trucks were allowed into Gaza every day to supply a bare minimum of daily necessities like food, water, building materials, fuel , and medicines. A very few Gazans who needed to leave for specialized medical care actually got out; some of them only when they agreed to be collaborators with Israeli security. This fence was all about Israel’s supposed security. A few of those who applied for permits to access medical care in Israel did not want to give exit permits except for a few thousand day-laborers to work inside Israel, in construction or farm work. In addition to that restriction on movement, Israel also controlled what products could enter Gaza, such as food, fuel, medicines, construction materials and water. And what farm produce could leave Gaza to be sold in Israel. Israel also controlled Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline, limiting how far out fishermen could go, and definitely forbidding escape by sea. The only airport was destroyed long ago. where Gazan fishermen could cast their nets, which also meant no one could escape Gaza by sea. Gaza had no airport and thus no control over their airspace. Gaza became known as the largest open-air prison in the world, a bare 24 miles long and 6 miles wide, with 2.3 million inmates. Finally, we know that Palestinians in Gaza have been screaming to a deaf world about their conditions since 2006, when Israel declared their newly elected government a terrorist organization and looked for new ways to undermine them. In 2007, Israel sealed the borders and the international community went along with their propaganda about the evil Hamas government. Let me say here, that my West Bank Palestinian friends never liked Hamas’ politics nor its theocracy, but recognized that they gained popularity by providing schools and clinics where they were lacking, and at times seemed like the only organized resistance to Israel’s control. For sixteen years Hamas has asked the international community to intervene to end collective punishment, which is illegal under international law. Their cries were not heeded. To the contrary, Israel, with U.S. funding, has repeatedly bombed the open-air prison with devastating loss of life and infrastructure: in 2008-09 (Operation Cast Lead), 2012 (Pillar of Cloud), 2014 (Protective Edge), 2018 attacking the nonviolent Great March for Return, 2022, May (Break the Wave), and August (Breaking Dawn). Even the Palestinian Authority, which the international community recognizes as the legitimate government of the West Bank, has done nothing except collaborate with Israeli security. What should Hamas have done to free its people? We who believe in nonviolence should have an answer. I don’t. When I saw the image of a Palestinian tank breaking through the fence, I cheered. That was before I heard the reports from the Israeli side of the slaughter of civilians, including youth at a music festival. I didn’t want to believe it. I have had to face that these murders happened. At the same time, It is more than possible that many executions were committed by non-combatants who saw the broken fence and entered Israel, driven only by a thirst for revenge. We will never know what the Hamas military command (the Qassam Brigades) told their armed forces to do or not to do. Regardless of their intentions, Hamas used violence. And regardless that international law allows colonized people to use weapons to fight for their rights, it does not allow targeting civilians. And regardless that killing civilians is a war crime, 90% of the casualties in today’s wars are civilians. “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” We humans seem unwilling to learn that lesson.

Dismantle Guantanamo

Thirty men have died since they were cleared and released from Guantanamo prison. What did they die of? Where were they? Does anyone know? Did we here in the U.S. care? Weren’t they “the worst of the worst” who plotted 9/11? Our government, through four administrations, would have us forget these men, and forget the 35 Muslim men still isolated under military detention at Guantanamo. They would have us forget many things about Guantanamo which otherwise would reveal a cruel and cold-blooded policy of dehumanizing people in order to support a War on Terror. I was just in Washington DC as a member of Witness Against Torture to protest the 21st anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo, and I have some questions. Do we need a War on Terror? Many of us thought so, to answer 9/11, to protect the United States. But, did it have to be a military war? Did it have to target Muslim men? Did it have to ignite a latent Islamophobia? So many questions. So few truthful answers. But we do have some facts. Guantanamo Prison, outside of U.S. borders, on the island of Cuba, received its first prisoners on January 11, 2002. Since then 779 Muslim men and boys have been held there, almost all without being charged or tried for a crime, almost all released after years of detention so that there are only 35 left. So surely those 35 are guilty of something. But no. Twenty of them have also been cleared for release, since February of 2021, yet are still locked up – waiting. Cleared for release means some third country has to take them off our hands, because we, who have abused them for up to 20 years, refuse to take them, by Congressional order. While the U.S. begs and bribes other countries to receive these men, the men sit in their cells and wait, thus prolonging the agony of not knowing if or when freedom will come. Yet, freedom has not proved to be free. Aside from the aforementioned 30 who have died since they were released, hundreds more are caught in limbo, without a passport, without a job, without medical care or insurance, and without being reunited with their families! Some are in countries where they don’t speak the language; some are shunned as ex-Gitmo, as if they HAD committed a crime. What do we owe to these men? – for they ARE men, humans like us, deserving of respect and care. (We tortured some of them, in the most despicable ways, but that truth too is hidden in the secret Senate “Torture Report”.) If you think we owe them some token repair, you can help through the Guantanamo Survivors Fund. ( www.nogitmos.org ) Full disclosure: Ten of the 35 men at Guantanamo today have been charged, but their confessions were obtained under torture and thus being questioned. Two men have been tried and convicted. Ironically, the so-called, self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and his four co-conspirators, all at Guantanamo under military detention like the rest, have not been tried. Does this look like a functioning judicial system? Is this the way to spend our resources, at the cost of $14,000,000 per prisoner per year? Let us NOT forget Guantanamo, but instead work to dismantle it. It is part of a wrongful, violent, inhumane system of our government. It is our responsibility. Let us create healthy systems that are inclusive and based on justice for all. Guantanamo is not that. Sherrill Hogen, a member of Witness Against Torture, No More Guantanamos, and World BEYOND War, lives in Charlemont 413-625-8195

On Being a Palestinian inside Israel (Oct. 28, 2022

Here’s the thing: Duaa is a citizen of Israel, but/and she is Palestinian. She works part time at the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (PIBS) as a biologist, and full time as a high school teacher in a public school for Palestinian children. She is one of the 20% of Israelis who are Arab Palestinians. I have found it difficult to wrap my head around this fact: that the Palestinian Muslim woman I am talking to is an Israeli. Under her hijab and modest dress is a strong, independent and politically aware professional woman. And she is not bothered by being 34 and unmarried. When I asked her to tell her story, in order to help Americans back home feel connected to the people of Palestine, she wanted to start with the story of her village, Beit Safafa. She explained that in 1949, when the boundary outlining the new state of Israel was traced on a map and called the Green Line, it was drawn right through the middle of her village. So half the village was inside Israel, and the other not. Jordan was in control of the other half, which fell within the Jordanian territory known as the West Bank. On the Israeli side of the village Palestinians were made citizens of Israel, given Israeli IDs and passports, and educated in Israeli schools and universities. They were able to seek employment in Israeli businesses with Israeli salaries and benefits, like health insurance. The villagers on the Jordanian side of the Green Line did not have access to good paying jobs or benefits, although they could access good educations in the Arab world. When Jordan lost control of the West Bank in the ’67 war – the start of the Israeli military occupation—Beit Safafa was physically reunited but still divided by citizen status. Those with Israeli IDs could pass that status down to their children, who tended to look down on their neighbors who had Palestinian IDs. Another big benefit of having an Israeli ID is the freedom to travel. They can drive around Israel and enter Jerusalem. Those with a Palestinian ID cannot enter Jerusalem or Israel without a permit--not easy to get. And their freedom of movement inside the West Bank is interrupted by walls, checkpoints, segregated roads, and settler violence. The village is only now beginning to overcome its segregated attitudes, as they are more aware of what unites them – Israel’s discrimination against Palestinians, whether citizens or not – and the fact that their village is totally surrounded by Israeli settlements . As a public school teacher living inside the Green Line, Duaa is employed by the Israeli Ministry of Education. The curriculum at her school is controlled by Israel, which forbids her to teach about the “Nakba” (Catastrophe), of 1948, when 2/3’s of the population of Palestine was expelled from their homes and villages by Jewish militias. Neither can she comment on any current protest against Israel’s oppressive occupation. Since Duaa teaches biology, this is not much of an issue for her, but her students come to school bringing the events of their daily lives under occupation with them, and of course they talk among themselves. One of her students had her home demolished by the Israeli army, and one lost a cousin to an Israeli bullet. Luckily, there are counseling services at the school. Duaa’s father has an Israeli ID, while her mother does not. So, Duaa struggles with identity, as she thinks many Palestinians living in Israel do. Should they identify more with Israel because they are citizens, or with Palestine, because they are Palestinian. Duaa defines herself as a Palestinian with an Israeli passport. Duaa has a sister and two brothers. Her older sister, married with 2 children, has lived in Africa a total of 5 years, between South Africa and Kenya. She is an artist and now teaches art in a Palestinian school . One brother has joined their father in his business as a bakery/catering service. Her youngest brother works as an accountant for an Israeli business. Again, my mind says, “But wait, why would he want to work for the oppressor?” forgetting that her brother is also Israeli, and the good paying jobs with benefits are there. Duaa herself is an educator/trainer of other Palestinian teachers, but her supervisor is an Israeli Jew, and she has co-workers who are Jews. I shake my head. I see why identity is an issue. Her message to my audiences in the U.S.? Realize that this (the occupation) is injustice. It is not a “conflict” where the two sides can learn to love each other. One side is the oppressor and the other side is the oppressed. It is not based on hate or religion. It is a colonial system. Duaa says, “It feels like history is repeating itself, because before us Africa was colonized. This is not anti-semitism . Absolutely not. And it needs to end, and that’s it.” Will she vote in the Israeli election Nov 1? No. She did vote twice, but not anymore, because it won’t make any difference in her life.

Grim Results of Israel's Apartheid. And a Story

My friend Michel runs a Palestinian, geo-political, tour guide agency. Grit and persistence keep it going, as tourism has dropped due to Covid. I asked for his assessment of the recent increase in settler and Israeli army violence against Palestinians. (Over 200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and journalists Shireen Abu Akleh and Ghurfan Huran have been killed so far this year.) And what effect would the upcoming Israeli elections have on this situation? One of Michel’s tour guides, who had just served us Arabic coffee, answered first. She thought the candidates for Prime Minister of Israel were competing for who would be the toughest on Palestinians, thus spurring on instead of restraining, acts of violence like uprooting olive trees, attacking farmers and even international supporters as they attempted to harvest or work their land, vandalizing cars, and praying at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. I had read about all of these acts over the last few months, and asked if this incitement to violence would subside after the elections? “Maybe; but maybe the winner will set about implementing the threats made during the campaign.” Michel pointed out that the majority of the Israeli Knesset are now settlers, and will act to protect their interests and to satisfy their (settler) constituents. He likened today’s atmosphere of fear and aggression to the 1930’s when the Jewish underground was armed and very active (with British support) against the native Palestinian population. He didn’t hold out hope that the situation would improve after the election, though Israel might turn its attention away from internal policy and toward appeasing international concerns about the clear violations of Palestinian rights, settler aggression, and killings. “The only hope lies in Europe waking up, he added. American will never be a fair broker, Russia doesn’t care, and Asia is focused on trade.” I didn’t get to ask Michel, who was about to start a staff meeting, if he thought Europe would wake up, but there is no evidence that the Western world is about to defy the United States in order to change the course of events in Palestine and Israel. Finally, I asked what I should say to my community back home. I will be asked to give talks… “They will not understand. The only way to understand is to come here. And anything you say against Israel will be attacked by the media. But, do tell our stories. So, dear readers, here is a story that I offer to illustrate that Palestinians are not all of one mind. Jihan is a mother of 3, the youngest only 5 months old. She works part time at the Museum as a Biologist. She is married to a Greek Orthodox priest. (Note: It is only Roman Catholic priests who cannot marry.) As I know from a friend Stateside that being married to a minister can be challenging, I asked her about that. She admitted that it is hard being married to a priest due to his many duties that require a strict diet and periods of celibacy. But her discontent lay elsewhere. Sadly, Jilian would like to leave Palestine. She said that Muslims discriminate against the Christian minority, and beside that her grandmother is Lebanese. Palestinians don’t like the Lebanese because of their more “liberal” life-style, and Jilian feels that prejudice even though she dresses conservatively. (The Lebanese don’t like Palestinians either, maybe because of that very prejudice. The thousands of Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon are not allowed passports nor work permits.) As part-Lebanese, and as wife of a priest, and as a Christian in a majority Muslim country, Jihan does not feel she belongs anywhere. I let her sadness sink in, and then asked where would she go, if she could? “Anywhere were people love each other.” Then, as if knowing that that place doesn't exist, she added, “ People suffer everywhere; I would like them to be happy. I try to be loving to everyone “so they will feel it.”

Last words before leaving Palestine

I feel I owe it to Palestine to write one more blog before leaving here. There hasn’t been time to write in the mornings, and I am too tired in the evenings. That goes for this evening too, except that news from Nablus and how it is affecting my friends there is keeping me from relaxing. Last night the Israeli army invaded Nablus, headed into the Old City, massacred 5 men, and injured dozens more in a futile attempt to destroy a new, independent, guerilla group called “Lion’s Den.” No, Palestinian armed resistance will not bring peace, but people are applauding such resistance because Israel is assassinating Palestinian civilians and children at an ever increasing rate: so far this year 175, including 41 children. Some of those deaths were retaliation against Palestinian attacks on Israelis, but it is hardly tit for tat. Israel wages war and Palestinians resist. It is grim. As a young Palestinian said to me this afternoon, as he was driving me back to my house, “How are we going to stop this?” Well, of course I don’t know. How are we going to stop the climate criminals? How are we going to stop white supremacy? Etc. How are we going to keep trying, when we cannot see the arc bending towards justice? Back to Nablus: for two weeks Nablus has been under siege by the Israeli army, meaning all entrances are closed by military checkpoints. (Do Americans know what a military checkpoint is? Not really.). To get into the city, you have to know all the little villages surrounding the city, and which back roads might be open. Even then, you might encounter a “flying checkpoint” – one that wasn’t there a few minutes ago, but is now manned by soldiers and a metal strip of spikes across the road. Once inside the city, you can’t be sure where you might end up, but certainly it won’t be the bus station you used to use. Then there is the question of leaving the city. At this moment, Israel is intent on keeping every one of the 475,000 inhabitants locked down. So, all exits are blocked. Again, your driver can try back roads, but there is no guarantee he will be successful. If I get into Nablus, I might not get out again in time to catch my plane back to the States. Some of you know that I am trying to meet up with “my family” in Nablus, and with my friend, Mohammed, who is also director of the Palestinian House of Friendship. (PHF) I had made up my mind to go to Nablus in spite of the dangers, in order to see my family for the first time in 3 years, even if I couldn’t see Mohammed, who has been ill. But I can’t risk not getting out of the city in time to fly home. Tonight I heard from Mohammed that actually he is not in Nablus, but in Ramallah, getting further medical testing. And Majed is there too. And maybe I can meet up with them in Ramallah. Maybe, maybe. And it would mean not seeing my family at all, not this year. Tomorrow has come and gone. I did see Mohammed and his three adult children in Ramallah. (I did not get to Nablus to see my other family, which was expecting me.) The mini-van public transport from Bethlehem to Ramallah was a smooth hour and 20 minute ride. The ride back at 4:30 was one big traffic jam which our driver avoided several times by taking detours through narrow village streets along the way. I took photos of the settlements and soldiers we kept passing on the main roads. And of the air pollution, which is intense here. I haven’t time to edit this ramble. I would like to give you a sense of what the day in Ramallah was like. Majed picked me up in the center of the city and took me to a posh café – so posh that it served bagels and lox and did not have Arabic coffee! However, it is one of Mohammed and Majed’s favorite places. I had a latte and large slice of Tiramisu. Then I launched into my interview of Majed, which lasted 2 hours, until Mohammed arrived, straight from the doctor’s office where he had undergone the last series of diagnostic tests. I knew I couldn't trouble Mohammed to dictate his annual thank you letter to American PHF donors, so had prepared questions for Majed instead. Majed was truly delighted to be asked to fill me in about the last year’s activities at PHF and projections for the future. He is the main executer of the projects that Mohammed initiates. As such he has taken about 40 trainings and then himself trained 2 Palestinian women to carry out the projects. I can’t include more details here. Suffice to say that It is a privilege to support the work of PHF. Let me know if you have any questions about Palestine. I am eager to share what I have learned and the people I have met.

MUSINGS ON LIVING UNDER CONSTANT THREATS , LOCALLY AND GLOBALLY

 Maybe because everyone around me today is facing daily and nightly threats to their safety and sanity, I am paying more attention to what that must be like.

I realize that we are all living with the existential threats of nuclear annihilation and climate catastrophe, and that we manage not to dwell on that reality.  I am speaking as a white person of adequate means, who lives in a peaceful, rural setting.  I am aware that what I am feeling is largely determined by that identity.

 

But today I am in occupied Palestine, where there is no relief from the conditions of military occupation. Everyone’s days and nights are impacted by armed soldiers who do not have the least respect for Palestinian life or culture. Try to picture yourself in the following.  On her way to work as a teacher or nurse, or engineer or lawyer, Mariam may be stopped and her purse searched while she waits for a young foreign (i.e. Israeli) soldier to hand back her I.D. and allow her to continue on.  She cannot protest for fear of prolonging this process, already prolonged for as long as the soldier feels like making her wait.  There is no way for her to avoid feeling humiliated, but one resistance she can offer is to show no emotion whatsoever.  The soldier would rather see her squirm.  Multiply this by thousands of Palestinians who are trying to get to work on time.

 

Put a young mother with a baby in her arms in that same position.  She may not squirm, but the child might cry for whatever reason babies cry, and the mother cannot quickly find a solution to console her child.  Or let’s say that the victim of this treatment is a man taking his six year old son to the doctor for a painful earache.  He had to get a special permit to cross the checkpoint for medical reasons.  Even with the permit,  the soldier tells the father to lift his shirt or stand in the rain, and the boy takes this in.  His father treated like a child.

 

Once father and son return from the doctor and get through the checkpoint, they will walk by the home that was just reduced to rubble. It wasn’t their home, this time, or maybe it was. And maybe when they left home this morning, it was still standing, the boy’s toys and books neatly on a shelf in his bedroom.  He   knows that his older brother was arrested a few nights ago because that was a very scary night, being woken up by soldiers with guns breaking down the front door at 2:00 in the morning.  He remembers he wet his bed because he was so scared.  He is too young to understand why his brother’s arrest was followed by punishment for the whole family and his toys ruined.

I have often wondered how I would feel if my house burned down and I lost everything in it, and what would I most miss.  I think I would mourn most the loss of my journals and photos.  But a Palestinian woman loses something much more profound: the center of family life, a place of safety, of comfort, and a sense of belonging.  It is something she can never recover, even if she has the means to rebuild her house.

 

Neither fathers nor mothers can keep their children from going out to protest the appearance of Israeli armoured jeeps in their streets.  Typically, the children throw stones at the invaders. Typically, the soldiers fire tear gas at the children who may retreat temporarily.  But when the kids start in again, the soldiers fire live ammunition, and often hit their target.  Then there is a dead or maimed child, and a mother who can’t bear the grief, and school chums who saw what happened – the blood, their friend lying still in the street.  This is a daily possibility that hangs in the air. Every Palestinian watches these scenarios on the TV evening news.

 

A common scenario in Bethlehem, about a quarter mile from where I volunteer at the natural history museum, is for youth to throw stones at an enormous military watch tower to express their outrage at the latest aggression against their lives. They did this just yesterday, and the tear gas used to stop them drifted downhill to the museum. As we felt our eyes tear and throats burn, we closed the windows.  This time the protest was in solidarity with the 30,000 residents of Shuafat refugee camp just North of Jerusalem.  Israel had closed all traffic in and out of the camp for three days as the army searched for a Palestinian they presumed to be the killer of an Israeli soldier. (Interestingly, Israel’s mighty army has not yet found the killer, aka resistance fighter.)

 

To prove the pointlessness of using military force, to hold on to power, the closure of Shuafat enraged another 120,000 people who needed to access the camp or at least drive near to it to conduct the business of their daily lives. So when Shuafat called for a nationwide general strike, the youth of Bethlehem (and presumably in hundreds of other places in the West. Bank) responded. The army fired tear gas at the youth, and prepared to use live fire if they did not disperse.  

 

To be continued….

 

 

 

 

 

Tidbits of the Larger Picture

 Walking around the Old City in East Jerusalem yesterday, I succumbed to a shop owner's appeal to see the work of Palestinian artists on display in the next shop, knowing that it was really an appeal to buy something. I did buy something in the end, overcome by the very clever strategy of  the owner, but in the process I got to interview the woman who was tending the gallery of Palestinian artists. After I  had appreciated the paintings and reproductions that filled the small space, I started chatting with Rula, who was probably just bored enough (for lack of customers) not to mind my intrusion.

Rula, age 58, with long, wavy brown hair is the divorced mother of four adult children, all of whom live in the U.S. and all are graduates of U.S. universities. She raised the children alone.  When she was just 4 she was sent to a private school because of the dangers her family faced after the '67 war. The separation from her parents was traumatic. Her father was raised in Jaffa, and was among the thousands forced to flee from there in '48, leaving behind a beautiful home.  What became of all those beautiful homes?  They are now very high-value Israeli homes.  The Palestinian owners gradually sold them for very little in order to take their children to safer apartment buildings. What I hadn't known is that Israel had a policy of pushing drugs to children so that the parents would leave.  Which they did, selling far below the market value buildings now worth millions.

I asked Rula a question that has been pressing on me for some time.  Did she think the Israelis will take over the whole of Jerusalem's Old City, already filling with more and more settlers and soldiers? Sadly, she said, "Yes. They will take it all". One of their methods is to promote the sale of drugs to children.  Parents decide to leave to protect them.  They need to sell their apartments, but few Palestinians can afford the price.  Israeli settlers can afford it, and the family submits to that reality. One more settler family them moves into the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.  I already know that settlers make for noisy, obnoxious behaviors which they hope will influence more Palestinians to leave.

This scenario is both enraging and very sad.  Rula said I should not be so sad for Palestine, as it will make me sick.  "And besides,  the world is changing. The U.S. is not as strong; China and Russia are stronger. Israel is reaching out to Arab countries because Israel knows it cannot depend on U.S. protection forever.  So she has hope.

Later I read an email from Churches for Middle East Peace reporting that the U.S. government is concerned about the uptick in violence in the West Bank, and was asking both sides to deescalate.  And I say to myself, "How interesting: the US is concerned now that some Palestinians have become violent toward Israeli soldiers, but not concerned about years of Israeli's daily aggression against Palestinians."

I would add a photo of Rula, but tech difficulties are interfering!  Best I send this blog when I can.  I send it with love for Palestine and all peacemakers, Sherrill

Sebastia, Palestine - Charming, Ancient, Afflicted

       Sebastia, West Bank, occupied Palestine is the site of Roman ruins that any tourist would be delighted to visit, especially because you can walk inside them, alongside the tall, standing columns that used to line the main road, up the steep steps of the amphitheater, and through the outlines of dwellings, feeling the presence of people who once lived there.  This treasure, on the outskirts of town, attracts Palestinian and international students and researchers, tourists and archeologists. Sebastia has even more ancient roots, going back to 3500 BCE with artifacts to prove it displayed in a small, expertly curated museum in a historic building opposite the picturesque town square.

          Just a short walk uphill towards the ruins brings you to an open plaza. There the town just completed the project of constructing a modern information center and
paving the plaza to better accommodate tour buses.  In the center of the plaza is a new flag pole from which to fly the Palestinian flag --  black, white, green and red.  The flag was hoisted on August 13.  A week later Israeli military authorities ordered the flag and pole to be removed because it was upsetting visiting Israeli settlers. Yes, that is correct.  In this peaceful, beautiful Palestinian town with its recently renovated tourist accommodations the Israeli military is in control, due to the 1993 Oslo peace agreement. And a Palestinian flag and its pole are considered a threat to Israeli security.  
        The  new construction was funded by Belgium, and approval was granted by Israel in 2018.  The grand opening was scheduled for September, 2020.  That’s when Palestinians intend to re-install the flag pole, and I have no doubt they will raise the Palestinian flag, without permission.  Neither do I doubt that the Israeli army will demand the flag’s removal, or remove it themselves.
      I was in this town a year ago, a gawking tourist, happy to be with my Palestinian host and a 14 year old Palestinian girl learning the history of her people and her land. At that time we discovered the stump of a flagpole on the top of the hill above the Roman ruins.  From there we could see a settlement in the valley below. The settlers there, protected by the Israeli army, had sent its youth to destroy this flagpole because it flew a Palestinian flag.  Though they needed no justification, Israel had long ago declared Sebastia’s archeological resource to be an Israeli National Park, heralding that Tel Samaria (Sebastia) was the capitol city of ancient Israel. Citizens of Sebastia lift up a different history and in 2014 put their flag on top of this hill. Every time settlers came to remove it, it would reappear, until finally the base that held it in place was itself destroyed. 
     The settlers may think they have had the last word, backed as they are by the Israeli army, but I believe the Palestinian flag will fly there again, whether by another act of Palestinian resistance or when Palestine is finally free.

 

Voices from the Bottom

    The Poor People’s Campaign is speaking loudly in hundreds of voices in every corner of the country.  It is organizing privileged people like me and people living out of their cars.  If you aren’t already on board, go to June2020.org and you will be.  I went, and I listened to three hours of illustrated testimony by the PPC Virtual Assembly and Moral March on Washington, June 20, 2020, attended by over two million people.

    Here is what I am learning.  

    One: Silence is Betrayal. The refrain for one of the many songs written for the Campaign is, “Somebody is hurting my people, and we won’t be silent anymore.”

    Two: The frontline workers whom we can’t pay a living wage are acting out of “sacrificial love,” and it is love that is showing us the way. It is who we are, and together with love we can change everything.

    Three: Hope comes from the bottom up.  We change the narrative about poverty and race by changing the narrators.

    Four:  Our moral compass was coopted by right wing religious nationalism, and we need to get it back with a moral revival based on love and justice for “the least of these.”

    Five: A few statistics that caught my attention:   

**The suicide rate among Kansas farmers is 85/100,000.  Kansas water is polluted by fertilizer run-off, causing high rates of cancer.  **39 million children live in or close to poverty.  Poverty is traumatizing.. °°80% of low-wage workers have not had a pay raise in 50 years.  **The water in Flint, MI is still poisonous sixyears after it was revealed to carry lead and other chemicals from industrial plants.  **In Dallas, Texas industries causing contamination of air and water in poor neighborhoods are called the Corporate KKK.  **There are voter suppression laws in 27 states.  **There are 45 million immigrants, 11 million of them undocumented; they are most of the “essential workers”; they all pay taxes. **Half of public schools are Re-segregated. **The US has 25% of the world’s incarcerated, but just 4% of the world’s population.

    Six: We live in a capitalistic society that says, “I will take from you.”

    Seven:  The U.S. Constitution legalizes black bondage. It declared that black people were 3/5 a person.  The 14^thAmendment should have corrected that by freeing slaves, but it allowed prisoners to be used as free labor.  Gerrymandering and voter ID laws further legitimize racism.  Thus it has always been legal to oppress black people.

    Eight: Every day we are fed the "lie of scarcity."

    Nine: Most of our policies have a “death measurement.” For example, the government’s slow response to Covid-19 caused more deaths, and black and brown communities are disproportionately affected.

It is TIME to change .  It is TIME for justice.  

Is There Hope?

    My heart is aching from just watching a moment by moment video of the police assassination of Raychard Brooks, 27 year old father of 3, who is black. Since George Floyd was lynched*, I have been to two marches and numerous vigils for Black Lives Matter.  Many newly aware white people and youth have been to those same protests, but the deaths keep happening.  Two trans black women were killed, maybe not by police, but by our racist police culture. Then two black men were found hanging from trees in rural California.  Suicides? Why should anyone believe that story? 

     As if by answer, after I wrote this piece, there were reports of five nooses in trees in Oakland, and of a 17 year old hung in a playground in Spring, Texas, and of a Latino hung in Houston on June 15.

    It seems that depravity, like racism, is inbred in America. I understand Langston Hughes when he says “America never was America to me.”  It is amazing that any black person could emerge from slavery and all the Jim Crow laws after it with any love for America.  I loved America until I found out what it had been doing to Latin America since - I don’t know - since taking a huge chunk of Mexico that lay North of the Rio Grande in 1848?  Since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823?   I couldn’t love a country that was using its power to take land and life from other countries.

    I was 22 when I got a scholarship to study in Argentina. I started to meet students who spoke about “Yankee Imperialism.”  I thought they were crazy, thanks to my American, middle class, college education. So I took my naïve self to the American Embassy to do some research.  The Embassy opened its library and even its social circle to me until I learned that what the students were saying was true.  My new education was hurried along by news of the Cuban revolution and how it was throwing off the yoke of U.S. domination.  Cuba was taking America’s knee off of its neck.

     That knee.  The same one that killed George Floyd, and Raychard Brooks, and Breonna Taylor, and, and, and.  It’s a wonder that anyone who wants justice has any hope at all. A line from Maya Angelou says, “when the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate,” and I wonder will the curtain ever fall? ( I had to look up “minstrel show” because I am white. It was a popular form of entertainment for white audiences with white actors in blackface denigrating black people.)  But I didn’t need to know the definition to know that Maya was a strong, proud, black woman who saw the world through eyes that could see every assault on black bodies.  She could see all that and still create beauty.  Next to that kind of creative resistance, that I also observe in Palestine, I feel incomplete, like I am missing a gene for hope.

     The other day Angela Davis said that the current uprising is qualitatively different from the explosive protests of 1968 when King was killed. Angela has a long view, a lived view, so she may be right.  I will borrow hope from her and let that hope take me into the streets to support Black Lives Matter. I didn’t think America had it in her to stay in the streets.  If she does, then I’ll take her back.  In fact, I’ll do my part. I’ll ask you to be in the streets with me to see if we can bring down that curtain on the minstrel show of hate.  The next time a black or brown person dies of this hate, I will try to remember them as a martyr to the cause of racial justice. Like George Floyd gave his life so we can be free.  Martyrs in a nonviolent army for freedom.

    Most times it looks like this army won’t win, but maybe it can, because finally there might be enough white Americans in the streets with them.  Please, don’t stay home.  I would liketo love America, would like to have hope enough to see America’s birth in genocide and enslavement finally undone.  It isour only hope.  It is my hope.

*Lynching is "murder without legal approval," not just by hanging.

Tributes to George Floyd, and all the rest.

This is an opinion piece I wrote for the Greenfield Recorder where it was published on June 4, 2020.  Following that is a poem I wrote for the same reason.

IN HONOR OF BREONNA TAYLOR, AHMAUD ARBERY & GEORGE FLOYD

Black men being lynched by white men in daylight, with witnesses.  Still.  It is not O.K.

Black mothers of black boys unable to keep them safe once they walk out the door. It is not O.K.

Navaho Nation deaths from Coronavirus way higher by comparison because they are historically denied access to clean water and adequate health care.  It is not O.K.

Privatized prisons, a whole new industry, bulging with black men put there by white society as a substitute for slavery, causing their sons to grow up without fathers or stable communities, and the fathers to be denied the right to vote, further disempowering them. It is not O.K

Cities like Baltimore with sky-scraper downtowns and yet whole blocks of apartment buildings boarded up, as if black and brown people didn’t need housing, and no one held accountable for redlining and slumlords. It is not O.K. 

Children with Spanish names in cages and no one knows where their parents are, while the parents are in tent cities (concentration camps) or in freezing, dirty ICE detention cells until they are deported with or without their children.  Whole families fleeing death in their home countries forced back across the border to camp out in Mexico, prey for gangs and extortionists. It is not O.K.

“Essential workers” (now we find out just how essential) who aren’t paid a living wage. They keep us alive but we don’t keep them alive. It is not O.K.

War is not O.K.  Climate change denial is not O.K.  Upgrading nuclear weapons instead of abolishing them is not O.K.  A foreign policy based on exploitation instead of sharing is not O.K.

We have become, or always were, a country without a moral compass.  Yes, there are good people, neighbors who help neighbors through floods and fires, who sew masks and give them away, medical and nursing home staff who labor to save the rest of us from the deadly virus. But our country is not O.K.

I am not O.K. as long as these things happen in my name.  It IS my country, and I have to take responsibility. I want these words to make a difference. But words can’t jump off the page and create magic.  Actions to take?  Now? With a paralyzing pandemic?  Yes. 

We have a history of resistance and it will continue. Let’s be sure we are part of it. Locally, we took a step towards justice as we protested the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery last Saturday on Greenfield’s Town Common.  For the long, urgent haul ahead, we can join national movements like

The Poor People’s Campaign, the Sunrise Movement, racial and environmental justice groups.  It is harder during the pandemic. I get discouraged too.  Yet, the lynchings must stop; racism and militarism must stop. Destruction of our natural world must stop.   We have to find a better way to be America.

 Not Waiting

This man should not have died:

George Floyd.

Pre-deceased by Ahmaud Arbery

 and Breonna Taylor.

They should not have died.

Predeceased by Eric Garner

and Trayvon Martin

who should be alive today.

Predeceased by Sandra Bland,

Michael Brown, and

12 year old

Tamir Rice.

They should still be alive

but instead their killers

are alive.

White America,

you have a lot to answer for

having started your climb

to fame

with the genocide

of indigenous peoples

whose land you took

whose lives you took.

Who are you, white America?

Who are you and

who gave you dominion

over all of God’s creation

and permission to kill it?

Is it just because you have

the bigger gun,

the bigger bomb

more young lives

to throw away in war?

You have a lot to answer for.

And  where are the answers?

Are they in the prisons

where you put our black men

to further emasculate them?

Are they locked in the brown bodies

That crossed the Rio Grande?

Those that didn’t die in the desert?

Watch out, white America.

You are turning brown.

The hordes you have sent

back to die in El Salvador,

Guatemala, Honduras

have relatives here.

Which reminds me.

There was a brown 

man named Jesus

of Nazareth who 

said your way of doing things

is not God’s way.

God’s way is merciful

but you are not merciful.

There are many dead  

to answer for. Say their names:

George, Breonna, Ahmaud,

Tamir, Trayvon, Eric,

Sandra, Michael. Freddie Gray,

Amadou Diallo, David McAtte,

Tony McDade…

But there are too many names,

new ones every day

and ones I don’t know.

I am not going to wait

for the answers.

Grief doesn’t wait.

Rage doesn’t wait.

The melting Artic

is not waiting.

                                        Sherrill Hogen

                                        June 4-8, 2020

Suffocating

   On July 7, 2014 Eric Garner was murdered by suffocation by a white policeman in Brooklyn, N.Y.  As the officer held Mr. Garner on the pavement in an illegal chokehold, Garner repeated eleven times, “I can’t breathe.”  Then he stopped breathing.

   As mostly black neighborhoods protested this killing, they repeated Eric’s last words as evidence that black U.S. citizens are systematically choked to death every day by a racism that denies their right to exist.

   In the West Bank of Palestine the feeling is the same.  Israeli settlements are growing.  They start as small hilltop encampments on stolen Palestinian land and grow into well-appointed towns and cities.  As they grow, one feels them sliding down the hillsides like a lava flow or creeping like an invasive plant over the land towards the roads Palestinians drive on and into the olive groves they are trying to hold onto. One feels the settlers’ suffocating presence even before they take over a village’s fresh water spring and cut down the surrounding olive trees.

    They are not benign. The settlers’ ambition is to take all the land in sight and to chase the Palestinians away.  And they are armed.  They are a leaderless army, not accountable to anyone.

    One feels Israel is cutting off the oxygen to Palestine, not everywhere at once, but slowly, inexorably and purposefully.  With less oxygen in the air, one has less ability to deal with the newly fortified checkpoints, the accelerated rate of home demolitions, the loss of grazing land for animals, the less and less water being allowed into homes, wells, and irrigation systems.  

   All of Palestine is crying, “I can’t breathe.”  How many times before it is too late?

Does Israel Have the Right to Exist?

Does Israel have the right to exist? That is the wrong question. The right question is: Does Palestine have the right to exist? I have traveled to Israel and Palestine for the last 17 years, and here is my answer.

Israel does exist, albeit on stolen ground. Palestine existed, but it was chosen by Zionist Jews to be a Jewish homeland and has since become a state. Zionism was and is a project of colonization requiring the expulsion of the native population. (Colonizing the Americas also required genocide of the native population.) For Zionists, Palestine did not have a right to exist. Thus the process of driving Palestinians from their homes and villages in the war of 1948 in order to make way for the new state of Israel.

Expulsion is an ugly process. It includes killing civilians in order to strike terror and cause flight. Palestinians fleeing war were never allowed to return to their homes, even though that was international law at the time. Over 500 of their villages were razed to the ground to eliminate the possibility of return and to erase evidence of their existence. Thus Zionists could proclaim that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Two thirds of the indigenous population were driven out before the U.N. brokered a ceasefire.

While the outcome gave the new state of Israel 78% of historic Palestine, many Zionist leaders since then have expressed regret that they did not push every last Palestinian out of the area between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, so they would not have the demographic problem of creating a Jewish state that contains Arabs. Instead, Israel must contend with 20% of its citizens being Palestinian Arabs, and around 5 million more Palestinians next door in Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem. What to do with them? Make their lives as miserable as possible without drawing international condemnation.

In the case of Gaza, fence them in, take away their water, and bomb them every few years. In the
West Bank those who can’t afford to leave must suffer Israeli military control over their daily lives via checkpoints, segregated roads, permits denied for building and required for getting from one place to another, land expropriation to allow Jews-only “settlements”, which are cities and towns built on Palestinian land. Inside Israel there are over 65 restrictive laws that apply only to Palestinian citizens.

Now there is consideration being given to another solution to the problem of the existence of Palestinians in the land that the Zionists want for a Jewish state: annexation. Netanyahu is campaigning to be reelected on a platform of annexing most if not all of the West Bank. This is where the settlements are, already illegal under international law, but thriving nonetheless. If Israel annexes most of the West Bank, it will not be to protect the rural Palestinians living there. The on-going expropriation of their lands will continue, forcing most of them to leave. Where to? Yet to be known, though Kushner’s plan (Trump’s “deal of the century) seems to indicate that Jordan should absorb them.

Another question we need to ask is, who are the terrorists? The man who picks up a gun or bomb or throws stones to resist the loss of his home, his farm, his freedom? Or the state that puts its soldiers and snipers in prison-like watchtowers in a segregation wall and along Palestinian roads, and arrests children from their beds in the middle of the night? (International law permits armed resistance to invading armies, but does not allow the abuse of children.) This is not a “conflict” between two warring parties; it is the brutal oppression of Palestinians by Zionists, backed and funded by the U.S.. Zionists created Israel and Zionists govern Israel, much as Trump and company govern the U.S..

My final question is, how can we support the Palestinians in their struggle for freedom while they continue to lose ground, in every sense of the word? Until now the only effective nonviolent way has been the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS). But there is a new initiative from anti-Zionist Israelis and Palestinians working together to create one democratic state (ODS) with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians from the river to the sea. Stay tuned, because this is a vision that can work, unlike Trump’s “deal of the century” to which Palestinians will never submit.

One Portrait of Endurance

Summer’s large brown eyes, framed with black mascara on long lashes, were listening to my questions. She had her hair covered to respect her family’s religious traditions, but her t-shirt showed a woman’s face made up like a cat with a black puff for a nose. My informal interview went on for an hour, during which we removed ourselves from the hub-hub of volunteers and visitors to the museum, and continued talking in another room.
I wanted to start with easy questions, so asked Summer where she is living. “I live in Beit Skariya in the middle of Gush Etzion,” Right away this did not make sense. How could her Palestinian village be in a settlement? So she explained that this very large complex of settlements, that together form the Gush Etzion Bloc that connects with West Jerusalem, has a hole in its middle where her village and 4 others continue to exist in spite of continuous efforts to dispossess them. These are agricultural villages and together once had 800 acres of land, but the settlements have confiscated all but 125 acres. Because the families in these 5 neighborhoods refuse to sell their land to the settlements, though they are offered huge amounts of money, they are embraced by Palestinians as resisters.
I knew immediately that Summer’s life at age 27 is defined by where she lives. “How is that for you?” I asked. She was quick to respond, the smile gone from her face,“I feel isolated, even during the big holidays. I can’t move around and visit relatives like everyone else can.” She went on to explain how there are now 2 checkpoints to cross to enter or leave her home - ever since there was a knife attack and a car ramming attack at the entrance to Gush Etzion back in 2014, when the number of such attacks on settlers by Palestinians spiked. She doesn’t dare walk through the checkpoints after dark, and doesn’t like having to ask a relative to come pick her up. But she works here in Bethlehem, and often has no choice but to travel late.
So Summer’s ID, which she must have on her at all times, reads “Residence: Gush Etzion.” Israel would rather she put her village name, but her father thinks that is a trap to use against them in Israel’s next move to take more of their land.
Next we talked about Summer’s education, because I wondered how she ended up here on the staff at the Palestine Museum of Natural History. She began her schooling in one nearby village and transferred to another in 4th grade. For 5th and 6th grades she was confined to her neighborhood due to the danger of traveling during the 2nd Intifada. A woman volunteered two rooms of her house to be classrooms for grades one to six. This is one of the ways Palestinians insisted on educating their children in spite of the violence caused by the occupation. For grades 7 to 10 Summer attended the public school where she had started elementary, but for eleventh and twelfth grades she enrolled in an agricultural high school. From there she was admitted to Hebron University and graduated with a BA in 2015. She is now studying for a Masters in Agribusiness at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem.
Its is probably clear that this much moving from school to school, including the “two-room schoolhouse” situation, would challenge most any child. Layer on top of that the fact that Summer, at a very young age, had to pass soldiers on the way to and from school, which meant being stopped, questioned, her schoolbag searched. She paused. “Were you scared?” Summer’s eyes began to fill with tears, and she cried. I apologized for causing her to re-visit what was clearly a traumatizing experience and said we could stop talking. But Summer wanted to continue. Maybe telling the story was more helpful than burying it.
“Has anyone else in your family gone to university?” No, she was the first, though now a younger sister is also going. To understand what this represents in Samar’s family, I needed to know about her siblings. She has 10 siblings from her father’s first wife who died of cancer. She is the oldest of five from his second wife. Her mother had been married before, had 4 children and then divorced. Divorcing and remarrying is highly unusual in Palestine, so I felt that Summer’s parents must be strong and interesting people. Summer thinks that she had more freedom than other young girls in her culture because of the spirit of resistance in her village and her family. They consented to her, a single woman, going far north to Jenin for an eight month course of study. To understand how much Summer has achieved, I will add that her father has been a farmer all his life, raising figs, almonds, grapes, plums and peaches. Her mother only completed 4th grade. Her aunts are illiterate.
And to understand how the occupation erodes the fabric of Palestinian life, I will add that the youth in Summer’s 5-village hold-out area must leave town if they want to start a family, because they are in Area C where Israel does not permit new building. Traditionally, when adult children marry, the family adds rooms onto their home for the new couple. She told me how one of her brothers is about to marry, and is secretly renovating the family home to accommodate him and his wife. Even such a renovation of an existing home, is illegal, and must be done undercover - not so easy when you are talking about construction materials.
Finally, only because it is closing time and we have to wrap up our conversation, Summer surprised me by the news that her 5 villages have petitioned Gush Etzion settlement to extend their sewage pipes into the villages, which apparently have no adequate infrastructure for wastewater. “What?!! The villages asked the settlement for a favor and the settlement is considering it?” Summer responded that not all settlers are violent, though some of them do attack her area and harm crops. Some settlers are normal people who understand the situation these 5 villages face and are willing to help. There is a settler woman who often gives her rides.
Samar says that settlers and soldiers (!) are also human beings - some good, some bad— well, maybe most bad, but still…

How to Become an Anti-Semite - and the Antidote

If you are not Jewish, and you listen to what Israel says about itself, and see what it does to Palestinians, you can easily become an anti-Semite.  Israel says it is a Jewish state and speaks for all Jews everywhere. It says that the Jewish state is for Jews only, and passes laws that are meant to restrict Palestinian citizens of Israel from equal access to education and housing.  It places military controls all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem to check the IDs of every Palestinian, search them if they want, deny them passage if they want, and keep them off roads that are for Jews only.

They allow Jewish settlers to confiscate Palestinian land, attack Palestinian farmers, burn their olive trees,  throw stones at their children.  They demolish Palestinian homes and charge them the cost of the demolition. They put Gaza in a genocidal grip fenced in and without enough clean water, electricity or medicine to survive. The abuses are too many to list here, but each one is a painful violation of human rights and/or international law.

Seeing all this, why would you like Jews?  Indeed, you might think Israel wants to create anti-Semites, maybe to maintain its image as a persecuted victim that requires maximum security measures for its survival.

How to escape this push toward rejection of an entire ethnic group and its religion?  The antidote is to substitute the word ZIONIST for ISRAEL and JEW. Zionists have created this system of inequality and injustice.

 Zionism began as a Jewish secular, colonial project to take over the entire area of Palestine (from the river to the sea).  Zionists worked to empty the land that they wanted for a Jewish state of all of its native inhabitants - the Palestinians.  Their methods were the methods of war:  to kill, to terrorize, to dispossess, to remove by any means necessary. The objective was to colonize, to possess, and then to create a message to the rest of the world that would defend what they had done.   Many Jews worldwide opposed this Zionist project for various reasons such as foreseeing how it would be divisive, not wanting to leave the countries in which they had grown up, or understanding that it would be unjust to the native population.

But Zionists  became excellent ambassadors for their project, especially among Jews who were discriminated against in their home countries like Russia or Eastern Europe, and Nazi Germany.  They created phrases like , “A land without a people for a people without a land,” as if no one lived in Palestine.  Or, “We will make the desert bloom,” as if Palestinians had never planted olive trees, almond and citrus groves, vegetables and native herbs.  To this day Zionists can justify the military occupation of Palestine, with an infrastructure that not only controls the movement of Palestinians, but how much water they can drink and which roads they can drive on, where or if they can build a house. Palestinian daily life  is an arduous experience, meant to wear them down until they leave.

And occupation slowly erodes civil society, fostering corruption in high places, deception and mistrust among the general populace, and a vast network of collaborators.  The latter are cultivated by Israel to undermine community life. One example: A sick person in Gaza may seek a permit to be treated inside Israel. The permit is granted, and the sick person goes to the checkpoint at the “border”.  The soldier there asks the sick person if he/she could name a neighbor who is a member of Hamas. Just one name, and no further requests will be made.  “Only one name and I am free to go?” thinks the sick person, who is desperately ill. “Yes,” comes the lie. Because it will not be the last time the sick person’s vulnerability will be tapped.

This is Zionism.  For this I encourage you to be anti-Zionist, never anti-Semitic.