Susan's Blog: Pilgrimage to Israel/Palestine. Conversations in the City: Beyond cowboys and Indians.

Yesterday was a fascinating day. We divided into teams, and explored the four quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem, bringing back reports for the rest of the group at the end of the day. My team spent its morning in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. You can read about the Jewish Quarter of the Old City here. For me, the best part of the day was the chance to have extended conversations.

In the morning, I got to speak at length with a man, Gidali, who moved here to escape the anti-semitic attitudes of his hometown in Maine, and now works in an upscale wine shop in the Old City. Another man, born in Israel and raised in the US, moved back here as an adult to more easily live out the spiritual lifestyle he believes God wants for the Jews. Adhering to the Chabad Lubavitch traditions of Hasidic Judaism, Avi Dan volunteers two hours a day, helping Jewish tourists tie tefillin and encouraging Jewish women to light prayer candles for shabbat. Standing in line at lunch, we talked with high school students from Canada who are traveling here on a Jewish Heritage tour, having just arrived from a sobering and heartbreaking visit to the death camps in Poland. Here in Israel, they visit the main cities, a kibbutz, and Masada.

Then in the afternoon I had the chance to have long conversations with two Muslim men in the souq (market) on the way home. One of them, Mohammed Ali, lived for years in the US before returning home. His three children are all now in various forms of medical professions in the US. In another shop, Ayman, on summer break from his master's program at Hebrew University, is studying theology. He follows the Sufi traditions of Islam, and we spoke at length about his belief that religions have more in common than that which separates them. Ayman has also traveled in the US, and has his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering.

Everyone I spoke to was ready to talk -- and very open about their political beliefs. It seems that passionate feelings lie just below the surface with everyone here. I was fascinated by the total distrust both of the men I spoke to in the souk had for the political leadership of the Palestinians. Both articulated that Arafat had stolen huge sums of money and economically crippled the Palestinians, and were thus skeptical of the PLO. Both articulated that they weren't fans of the religiosity of Hamas, but that they appreciated Hamas' social projects and seeming financial credibility. Both were incredibly appreciative that someone asked them what it was like to live here. Both of the Jewish men I spoke to in the Old Quarter were clear and uncompromising about their religious beliefs, and profoundly thankful to have a place to live where they feel not so much in the minority, safe to live and practice their faith.

After dinner, and following the previous night's speaker from the PLO, we had a guest speaker from the other side, a rabbi and resident of Israel for over 30 years. He insisted that his opinion was just that-- AN Israeli opinion.

I didn't write last night, after hearing him speak, because I just didn't know what to say.

He was articulate and evocative about the fear and anger caused by the Intifada here in Israel.
He spoke at length about the 'myth' of prior residents of the land. In order to counter the claim that 'the Palestinians were here first!,' he argued that the Palestinian people were in fact a population of immigrants from nearby Arab countries who moved here as a result of the jobs created by Zionist development in Israel. Whether this is factual or not, I don't know. I happen to think that it's interesting, but that it doesn't change much in the bigger picture of the current conflict. (Would you argue that African-Americans in the US don't have a claim to American citizenship because 'we were here first'? Of course not.) Israel is held to a higher standard than every other country, he said, and it's not fair that everyone is so quick to judge what we do.

Here is MY opinion about what he said: He lost credibility with me when he refused to acknowledge that illegal (according to the UN) Israeli settlements in the West Bank are provocative and result in the economic and physical abuse of Palestinian residents of those areas. His utter lack of concern with the impact of the settlements on the people in the West Bank (not to mention the negative effect on Israel's credibility in peace talks) was astonishing to me. How is it, I thought, that you can demand for our compassion for the suffering you experienced, without even acknowledging the suffering of others? Even if you hate what Arab and Muslim extremism does in your country, can you not feel for the average person who just wants to live his life? 

Thinking of all the conversations I'd had that day and all the things we've seen this week, especially the wall around the West Bank, his lack of compassion seemed like utter denial of the situation. Later today, reading Braverman's Fatal Embrace, I found a paragraph describing a different event that described this speaker to a tee :

"He sat back, smiled--and opened with a joke. He was, for all the world, a man delivering an after-dinner speech; he would enlighten us in due time, but first he would entertain, warm us up. Clearly, we were in the presence of the conqueror, the man holding all the cards. 'We'll talk to them when the violence stops,' he pontificated once the jokes were told and it was time to talk about who was to blame. ...It was the blindness, the sweeping, crushing insensitivity to the feelings expressed by the previous speaker. The Palestinian sitting next to him was invisible; he simply didn't count."

A fellow pilgrim said yesterday, "We Americans like it when there are white hats and black hats, good guys and bad guys. But both sides here have sinned, and both sides refuse to forget, and in the conflict, politicians on both sides are using the poor as a pawn for more power. It's the poor who are suffering as a result of this battle."

Yes. And, the denial at the heart of last night's speaker's argument seems to me to be a fatal flaw and a moral blindness. And speaking of blindness, the many Israeli soldiers and young Jewish tourists visiting the Jewish Quarter with us yesterday to learn, rightly, of their own heritage--it is likely that they are not shown the West Bank wall. It's likely that their tour buses never drive through the eastern part of Jerusalem where most residents are Arab and Muslim, much less through a busy checkpoint. These things are easy to avoid seeing if you do not want to look.

In contrast to that, today, by chance, I ran into a young woman on the street who is here from Toronto, who acquired her Master's of Social Work, and now serves with the organization Rabbis for Human Rights. She's running a summer camp for Bedouin children outside the city, many of whom had their first year of formal education last year. These children have no legal status in Israel. RHR also runs regular protests and works to empower Palestinians in areas where settlements continue to expand and where the construction of the West Bank wall continues to make life more difficult for them. That conversation on the side of the road is yet another example of the willingness of people here to share their perspectives and their lives.

Last point: the late Edward Said's family started the Educational Bookshop , and it's just around the corner from where I'm staying. It's full of books you'd be unlikely to see in Barnes and Noble. Lest we throw up our hands and think that the situation is unsolvable, remember that there is a story that is not being told at home. There is much more to learn.