Stardate: January 23, 2020
It was a very difficult day in so many ways even though it wasn’t a huge walking day. We spent a lot of time with the Palestinian people. It’s a story that’s very rarely told in our society and in our news. I’m going to try and unpack a little bit. We started our day by going to the the Pac Community Center and visiting with people there, learning about the environmental issues of the area. At first, the presentation seemed very rudimentary but when I realized that it was for the Palestinian people who had come to to learn and not necessarily for us, I understood why it was how it was. Then after the presentation we were able to go out into the community garden and plant some bulbs. There were gladiolas and some sort of a buttercup.
I am not a plant person, but it was another in the long line of grandma connections on this trip for me and so it made me very happy to do a little gardening. I planted with a woman named Nuwada, which means “a flower when it is opened”. I had some bulbs and there were no tools available to use, however she had a tool. So I just went over and kind of gestured “can we plant together?” and so we did. We didn’t speak a whole lot, but she would dig a hole and she would gesture to me to tell me how to put the bulb in, and I would put it in. I thanked her and we parted company. I went back later to ask her her name because that seemed important. It was very special, I enjoyed that greatly.
I also enjoyed walking back and just seeing the neighborhoods and shops and the things that you would expect to see and the things that you wouldn’t. I was surprised that on a corner there was a shop that looked like a Hallmark store. The balloon said “baby girl” in English and there was a picture frame that said “family” that looked like something I would buy in the USA. It made me very aware of the permeating American culture.
The afternoon was a true contradiction. We went to see an Israeli settler who had established a home in a Palestinian neighborhood that overlooked Jerusalem. As we were driving up, Jared pointed out a neighborhood and there was a large Israeli flag, which designates that this is a settler. This person is making a stand – making a statement. Anyway, there was a large flag over a home and Jared made the comment, “Guess which house we are going to?” And of course I looked over and went, “I don’t know. I don’t know what house we’re going to.” But when we arrived it was the house with the huge flag. And we walked in, we walked up all these steps to the top of the house and it opened up to this large room. As we were walking up I’m thinking “Who has room in their house for all 27 of us to come in and sit down and have a conversation?” But it was a large room with an absolutely gorgeous view.
We met Alia and he began to have a conversation with us, to tell us about the place that he lived and who he was and he seemed so freakin reasonable. And then it came time for questions and he was asked “What is your vision for this place?” And he stood up, walked over and he got the Torah and and read the scripture from Isaiah that talks about beating swords into plowshares. And I thought, “Wow, it’s such a verse that we use all the time. We use it for so many things; to talk about peace, to talk about how we envision the world, and how we want things to be. And it started to dawn on me that there was this way of using the scripture, to use this call to peace as a means of justification; of being what you want. That your idea of peace is not that everyone is taking their swords and beating them into plowshares, but that your enemies are taking their swords and laying them down and surrendering. And surrender is different from just peacemaking.
It’s a little sad to realize that in my notes as Alia was talking I wrote down, “Location, location, location”. Which if you know any real estate agents or if you’ve ever worked in real estate you know that is the saying, “Location, location, location”. That is what matters the most to the value of a place. As I looked at that beautiful view and as I took pictures of it, I thought, “Who wouldn’t want to live here? We would all want to live here if we had that opportunity.” But then as Alia continued to speak, he made a comment in response to a question from Rami, he said, “There’s a difference between human rights and citizen rights.” And I realized that while he wasn’t in favor of killing people necessarily, he certainly was not willing to offer citizenship, to offer equality to Palestinians. He believed that his superiority in being a citizen somehow trumped other people and it left so many questions for me. At one point, Wyal made a comment that “people make a nation not a nation makes a people.” I’m not quite sure when he said it, but I wrote it down and I thought, “it’s a very profound way of thinking of this, that It isn’t a nation that is creating a cohesive group, but it is this cohesive group of people that is creating a nation.” And therein is a choice and the choice for the settlers to choose themselves and what they want over other people. It strikes me that this is a very childish way of attacking the world.
Later in the afternoon, we went back to where we had started, to the archeological dig where we were on our first day. We actually got to see how archeology is being used in a political manner. We arrived at the home of a Palestinian family who are being forced out of their home.
The archeological dig that is taking place near their home is attempting to force them out. When we arrived and knocked on the door, no one was home. Eventually as we were trying to decide what to do, a member of the family – a woman comes to the door and It is very obvious that she has no idea what is going on. She invited us all to come inside and I chose to stay outside. I chose to stay outside because I felt so uncomfortable in that situation for her and I somehow felt that it wasn’t the place for me to be. I made this conscious choice that I couldn’t sacrifice her comfort for my getting to experience what her home might be like. I stood outside even though it was raining and a profound conversation took place. I was talking to Dr Ray and I said that it’s unimaginable the horrors that we do to each other. Dr Ray turned and looked at me and said, “Where are you from?” Meaning, “You grew up in the American South. You know the horrors that we can do to each other. You have seen them firsthand.” And he’s right, I have. I have experienced it, but it’s harder to see sometimes when it is happening close to you as opposed to when it is something away. I guess what I mean to say is it’s easier to see something in others than it is to see in yourself, then it is to see in your loved ones and in your society and in the places where you feel comfortable interacting and working. It turned out to be a very profound moment for me along this journey.
In the evening we had dinner with the Bedouin tribe. As you might imagine I was worried about the food. On our way, I ate a Power Bar in an attempt to make sure that I would not be hungry and therefore hangry. I wanted to be able to hear what would be said around the table. On our way we stopped on the side of the road and picked up a gentleman who boarded the bus and told us about a school that was built because the children were having to cross a highway to get to school and so they built a school so they could educate their children. The school was now in danger because it wasn’t under code in some way. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the legalities of a school. How could a school be illegal? How could it be illegal to educate children, any children, in fact all children? It just seems like such a basic right that we have become accustomed to in our US society that it is so outside of what I can imagine is reasonable and unreasonable.
We arrived at a spot and the bus pulled over and we got out in an area that was really devoid of anything as far as I could tell. It was a dark night and the sky was beautiful and there were beautiful stars and no light pollution and the air was a little crisp and we were told that we would walk a ways to reach the camp because there had been rains the day before. We would need to walk because there was the possibility of the bus getting stuck (evidently that was something that had happened in a previous year) and so we got out and started to walk and after we’ve been walking a ways, a Land Rover shows up on this dirt road that was kind of cut out of a mountainous kind of area. Again, it was a dark night and so some people got into the the Land Rover and drove in and the rest of us continued to walk. As we arrived to the the Bedouin camp you could see it at a distance but you couldn’t really see it and all the sudden I had this feeling, I had this moment when I thought, “This is sorta like every TV show you’ve ever seen where there’s this terrorist organization and you’re walking up to this place in the desert in the Middle East.” And it was a little surreal walking up. I was acutely aware of the the ways that life has been portrayed to us through television shows and movies and news and all kinds of dogma that we get fed to us through our US media and, you know, the thought even ran through my mind, “What would my mother think? My mother who is a fundamentalist Christian and a right leaning political person and if she could see me now what would she think?” It was a thought that made me a little sad because I know what she would think. She would think, “What the heck are you doing there?” Although, knowing my mother, she wouldn’t say “heck” because, well it’s one of those words.
We got to the tent and it was pretty much as you would imagine, this tent. It’s large and kind of a canvas material. I imagine it being very similar to what maybe the military uses for temporary housing and bases on their missions. Quite possibly to the same type of area, this desert area. And we went in and inside it was warm and it was cozy and there were cushions,maybe low couches and rugs on the floor. We removed our shoes as we went in and sat on these couches and it was surprisingly comfortable. There was this large table in the middle of the room filled with food. I took some pictures of it and I took a little video of it and thought, “Boy, I can’t eat any of this, I have no idea what any of it is.” But when people started to fill their plates, when it was time to to get in line I inquired, “What are these foods?” and Dr Mikva was kind enough to walk through the line with me and to explain to me what everything was. I know when we got to the the bread, it wasn’t really a pita bread, it was a thinner, lighter, large sheet of bread and she was like, “This is the best you will have.” I grabbed a whole sheet of it,even though people were breaking it into smaller pieces I grabbed a large piece because if it’s the best I’m going to have on the trip I may as well have a significant amount. I go through the line and I am taking what I think that I will eat, including trying the grape leaves that were stuffed with – I’m not sure what and then I got some tea and I went and sat down and I was looking at the food, thinking, “Boy, I’m glad I ate a bar before I got here.” Then I started eating, and the food was actually delicious. It might not be my usual fare and it might not be something that I would eat at a different time but the food was actually quite delicious and I ended up actually going back for seconds and getting some more food which I think is the only time on this trip that I did that. And then our host pulled out a musical instrument. It was sitting out when we arrived and someone took it out of the tent to warm it up so that he could play it because it needed to be warm and they brought it back in to him and he played this musical instrument and it was absolutely beautiful. So many people go to the Middle East and they do this pilgrimage to Israel but this was a unique thing to be able to do. And I was trying to just absorb this moment of this thing that was so incredible. And when he had finished the song someone asked about the origin of the song. Where did it come from? How old was it? What did he know about the song? His response, I thought, was very interesting and an awesome response. He said he learned the song from his father and he had no idea how old it was. It could be 100 years old or more. It was something that had been handed down from generation to generation. The song was about the Bedouin lifestyle, the way that they lived, and I thought about that type of tradition, that type of handing down things from generation to generation. It may be a strange connection to make, but all while I was growing up my mother, on our birthdays would put butter on our nose and we would always be like “Why in the world do you put butter on our noses?” It was just one of those things that we didn’t understand why and she didn’t understand why. “It’s just something that you do.” was her answer. Then when I was an adult I picked up a Mental Floss magazine and was reading it at a bookstore one day and there was this thing about traditions and different cultures and it said that Scottish people put butter on the nose of the person having a birthday to help them slide through the next year, to slide past evil spirits. And my mother whose maiden name is McKenzie, who is 7th generation from Scotland has this tradition but doesn’t know where it comes from. It’s something that’s been handed down from generation to generation to generation and it was handed down to us even though we didn’t know where it came from. And I think that it was one of those things; that it kind of relates to “this is what we’ve always done and this is who we are and how we live in society.”
Our host then told us about how they live off the land and how they have their animals and how they have been confined. How their way of life and their traditions that have been handed down are now being mandated and stifled by these newcomers to their land. It’s a sympathetic story, that you could live in a place that your ancestors had inhabited for hundreds or thousands of years and you can try to continue a way of life that has been so much a part of who your family has been and who your people are and what you know and what you want your children to know and suddenly there are these newcomers who have stopped that. I think that there is a great trauma that comes out of that. When I think about social justice, I think that it is exactly this type of thing that needs some intervention. There needs to be some way to empower the Bedouin people, to be able to empower the Muslims who are living near the the archeological dig, to be able to empower those people who have owned this land and who have owned this place. They have been rooted here for so long. To empower them to hold on to their own and yet make room for an Israeli nation state …. Damn I wish I had answers.
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