On Racism at Breakfast

An hour ago I was at breakfast, sitting at a table with three others. It was lovely. I had been missing this, this easy socialising, but then came the question: 'What are you doing this weekend?'

I tried to dodge it, but finally had to answer: 'Tomorrow I'm going to Ramallah.'

'How can you spend Shabbat among Arabs?' asked J.

'She's not Jewish,' said S.

'Oh.'

Once more I was an outsider. I disliked my religion (or lack of) being spoken about without my consent, but I had become used to that. The conversation among us continued onto other subjects until another girl, D, approached the table to ask about the logistics of getting home after a Shabbat dinner that they were all invited to. It was suggested that she should take a taxi - but should make sure it was a Jewish driver.

'Why?' I asked nonplussed.

It was explained to me that it was safer to be with Jewish drivers than Arabs, who could kidnap you - supposedly it had happened in the past.

'I've never heard of that,' I protested.

'Yeah well, still, I prefer to have a driver of my own kind, I would not want to give money to someone who hated my kind,' said S. The others nodded in agreement. While she spoke, one of the staff of the place where we're staying was clearing the tables around us - he was Arab.


I had thought that I was beginning to fit in here, but how can I fit in among people who think in such a way? How is this thinking politically acceptable in Israel, and yet if someone was to say something like this in Australia it would be unquestionably considered racist. I know that this sort of thinking is not unique to Israel, but I've never been in a place where it is so openly expressed and acceptable in conversation.

I remember that in Palestine it used to distress several internationals (including me) when Palestinians would mix up 'Israeli' and 'Jew', thereby blaming the 'Jews' for the occupation, rather than the 'Israelis'. But when we addressed this, the Palestinians would always correct themselves and apologise: 'it is not the Jews we are fighting with, it is the Israelis,' they would emphasise. The convolution of Jew and Israeli is insidious, and appears at times throughout the Palestinian liberation movement and is a major issue, but where it sprouts, it is recognised by most for what it is: racism.

So there is an inequality here: what makes racism and discrimination against Arabs (particularly Palestinians) so much more acceptable among people? What makes this racism less racist? I don't understand.

Meeting Settlers

My first week at the Hebrew University was difficult. Few people spoke with me as I do not belong to the Jewish communities that they belong to. Fewer people spoke to me when my ties to the West Bank became known.

Many times during the breaks between my classes I would sit alone in the hallways and keep to myself. My solitude attracted one of the girls in my course who sought me out because she was also in the periphery of the group. She was observant in her Judaism and wore long skirts and a head-covering. While she could tell immediately I was not observant, my loose clothing and long-sleeves may have led her to believe that I was at least conservative. She had not heard about the time I had spent in the West Bank, though it did not take long for it to become apparent and I thought that was the end of it. We disagreed with each other on almost every point and it seemed that she no longer wanted to associate with me. But after a few days, she was once more smiling at me and seeking me out as I waited alone for our lectures.

I knew that she planned to immigrate to Israel (make 'Aliyah') and I knew that she was currently in the process of finding a community to live in as she wished to live in an observant community somewhere in the country. What I did not realise straight away was that effectively this meant that she was planning on moving into one of the settlements.

Today, our final lecturer did not appear, so after 45 minutes we decided to leave. During this time, this girl and I spoke.

I have met and spoken with settlers before. At the end of last year I even visited a settler in his settlement. It was not an experience I enjoyed but one that I took because there was an opportunity to do so. The man that I met was kind and hospitable towards us. At first I was challenged by him because he was so different from what I thought a settler would be (he spoke Arabic and lamented his inability to make friends with his Palestinian neighbours). But then he showed us an article that he had written offering a 'solution' to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians: he suggested that the Palestinians are all moved to Iraq. His 'reasoning': Iraq needed help to rebuild and the Palestinians could easily fill that role. He thus fulfilled the 'settler stereotype' I carried in my mind.

But this time it was different. The girl from my class, M., was an Australian and my age. She spoke and looked just like my old housemate in Sydney. The only difference between us was her headscarf and her skirt. Even her name is very close to mine.

She described to me the reasons that she wanted to move into one of the settlements: her love of the landscape and her love of the communities there. She said that if she could find a community and environment like the ones in the settlements within Israel ('within the fence,' as she put it), she would move there immediately, but there isn't such a place. She said that she understood the international law arguments about how settlements are illegal, but why shouldn't she move to the place that she loves when it's there available to her?

Her description of her love of the landscape and the feel of the environment struck a chord with me, because I also held this love. I love the rolling hill tops that are throughout the West Bank; I love the olive trees and the rock and the desert. When I go to Ramallah and walk around the outskirts, away the hectic central streets, all the stress and tension leaves me and I'm filled with love for my environment. This place is intoxicating, it sinks into the skin. But the thing that separated this girl and me is that when I dream of living here, I see myself living in a Palestinian environement, speaking Arabic in the streets. She imagines herself in a rural observant Jewish environment, a gated community, speaking Hebrew with her neighbours. And I know that there are many people in the world you share dreams like both of ours - Palestinian refugees dreaming of returning to their family's land, and Jews of the Diaspora dreaming of living in their holy land.

Both these dreams take place in the same land, but they are separated by check points, razor wire, watch towers and soldiers. Can they ever be reconciled?

Faces in Prison

On Monday my course had an excusion to an Israeli prison up north of Tel Aviv. Due to the size of our group, we were split into three groups and taken to different sections.

My group was first given an introduction to the prison by the education officer and then an intelligence officer spoke with us.

According to the intelligence official, around 60% of Israeli prison inmates are Arabs, and this was immediately apparent. Outside, Arab families waited to see their loved ones - small children ran around as if in a playground, but their games involved standing in front of the prison gates when they opened for as long as possible before guards with M16s came out to escort vehicles filled with prisoners out of the compound. The windows of the vehicles were covered in bars and mesh, but you could see fingers poking through the gaps and just make out shadowed faces peering out.

Israeli prisons play a double role - as well as holding those convicted of crimes (and housing those awaiting trial), they also hold people held for security reasons; "terrorists", mostly from the West Bank.

We didn't see the "big terrorists" (as the adults were called), but we were taken by the cells of the "little terrorists": those aged between 14 and 18. These boys and young men are held in Israel, despite their families living in the West Bank. I wondered how often their families were given the necessary permission to come and visit them.


Snapshot: Silent Faces, Staring Eyes

We were taken into an open cemented area, like the rest of the prison it was cramped and in bad repair. We were shown a small 'classroom' (a grey room with a few plastic chairs) and then were then taken to see a small basketball court. As we passed through the one section to the other I suddenly realised that the cells opposite the classroom were filled with silent young faces. The faces stared at us expressionless and emotionless. Some hands grasped at the bars of their cell doors. Their eyes took in everything about our appearance but gave away nothing of what they were thinking.

Those faces haunted me.

Whilst in the West Bank, I met many people with fathers, husbands and sons in Israeli prisons, as well as several men who had spent time there. But what I remember most is the mothers showing us photos of their young sons. I remember how much those mothers suffered at the thought of their sons so far from home.
And suddenly I was seeing their sons.

‘Safe’ and ‘Unsafe’ in the Old City

At breakfast I was talking with a few students about the Old City. I said that I found the streets to be tense and the others were surprised at this comment.
‘Where in the Old City do you mean? Do you visit the Arab Quarters?’ one of them asked. I nodded.
‘Well that’s why: they want to kill you; that’s why you find it tense.’
After a moment of shock, I tried to explain that I had been there several times and I had never felt threatened, but I was repeatedly cut off with assurances that it was dangerous and we shouldn’t go there. They were not interested in seeing and experiencing the other side. For them, the Jewish Quarter was the Old City.

After breakfast, I decided to live dangerously: I took a bus to the Old City. There were several aspects of danger to my trip: (1) I was alone; (2) I was travelling on a bus; (3) the bus had several stops in Arab areas; and (4) my intended destination was the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. All these things we had been explicitly warned about. Needless to say, I returned to the campus (where I am staying) unharmed.

Like me, a number of the students are ignoring many of the warnings we have been given, but many are not. Several who had originally planned to visit certain places have rethought their plans, which had seemed so harmless yet now seemed full of dangers. I find this regrettable. I understand that there are reasons behind the warnings we have been given, and that things have taken place in the past which substantiate them, but it’s just another way to separate and alienate people. The barriers here are not just physical (in the form of the separation barrier that we can see from campus, cutting off the West Bank), they are also mental.

I went from Mount Scopus to the Muslim Quarter, I bought some mint and sage from a Palestinian woman, I looked through some of the shops, and then I left again – all without being stabbed or threatened. The only comment directed at me from anyone was ‘asalaam iw-alaykum’ (‘peace be upon you’).

Looking at the Layers

There has been a shift.

I’ve stopped looking at the more right wing elements of the group I’m in and am peering through the layers around me. I was unfortunate to have found myself in a room full of people of one frame of mind on my second night here (the talk on Gaza); because it led me to believe that I was alone among a homogenous group, when this is not the case. There are always a myriad of opinions out there, even if they are not so obvious at first. I am fast realising that Israelis are as divided as Palestinians on the political issues, as are the Jews of the Diaspora.

I have spoken with people who refuse to refer to the West Bank as anything other than Judea and Samaria, but I have also spoken with people who have expressed a desire to see and experience the West Bank, though usually this desire is restricted to Bethlehem, as that is generally considered the easiest and safest option. While a desire to see the West Bank does not necessarily mean that the people expressing this desire oppose the occupation or the actions of the Israeli government in the Palestinian Territories, it does demonstrate a willingness to see the other side, and this gives me some hope.

Hearing from the Other Side

I’ve now been an official Hebrew University student for three days, equipped with a Hebrew University student card. There have been a myriad of impressions that I have gathered over these days. My classes have been particularly interesting, for which I am grateful. However, it has not been easy being in a situation where I do not feel comfortable revealing myself. Instead of being open about who I am and what I have been doing over the past few months, I have mostly reverted back to concealing these things, which became a habit while I was living in Ramallah and visiting Israeli areas.

I will share one the experiences I have had here: the one that has had the most significant effect upon me.

Sunday Evening: Alone

I was sitting among dozens of Americans, Canadians and Australians. We were in the Student Centre, though more accurately it should be called the Jewish Student Centre, as religion was overt and emphasised here. The Australians around me were law students and were taking the same course as I am (a short course in Israeli and Jewish law). We were eating chicken and wedges – a free meal offered courtesy of the couple who run the Centre and whose son is a soldier currently in Gaza. They haven’t heard from him since Wednesday because Israeli soldiers aren’t allowed to contact home while in the field.

We were all there for a talk on Gaza and the current situation in Israel. I thought it would be interesting to hear about the conflict from an Israeli perspective. And it was interesting, but I have never felt so alone as I did sitting crushed in that room. It was my first experience of being in a group who held views so paradoxical to mine.

I could write out all the things that I heard during this evening, and in my first draft of this blog entry I did. But the more I wrote, the more convoluted it became. Basically it comes down to two things: rhetoric and trust.

The rhetoric expressed by the people in that room was so similar to the rhetoric I had heard in the West Bank, often just exchanging the words ‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinian’ for ‘Israel’ and ‘Israeli’ (or ‘Jew’). The greatest difference was that here in Israel, they seem to be unconcerned about being ‘politically correct’ or qualifying their statements – after all, they need not be concerned with being accused of being anti-Semitic.

The trust issue was also simple: everyone around me had the uttermost trust in the Israeli government and the Israeli army to do the right thing.
‘I know that the army are doing all they can to stop civilians from being affected,’ said one of my classmates. They knew that ‘their people’ were good and they trusted them. Just as they knew that the Palestinians were different.
‘They don’t have the same respect for life; mothers happily send out their sons to blow themselves up and they celebrate this!’ said another. This wasn’t stated as speculation, or rumour; it was fact.

But I have been to one of those ceremonies where they ‘celebrate’ the deaths of ‘martyrs’. It was in Nablus in April 2007 at a refugee camp. The dead being commemorated had not been involved in attacks within Israel but had been killed by the Israeli Defence Forces in assaults. Before attending this ceremony (which I unknowingly walked into thinking that I was going to see a dance performance of the traditional Palestinian Dabke), I had also been told that mothers happily give their sons to the cause of Palestinian Independence. However, that was not what I saw.

I did not see mothers standing tall and proud as they received the small plaques commemorating their sons. Instead, I saw a woman bent almost double in her chair, head down, eyes red and hands clasped in her lap. She was grieving her child. Another family member, a brother, had his jaw and fists clenched trying to stop the tears that could be seen rising in his eyes. Their loved one was being publicly celebrated, it is true, but this family was not celebrating. They were grieving, just as people grieve all around the world when they lose someone. Perhaps this woman is proud that her son had been fighting for Palestine, but no mother can be happy at the death of her child.

So I thought of this woman and this man as I heard my classmates lament the twisted mentality of the Palestinian people. With their faces in my mind’s eye, along with all the images of checkpoints, M16s and army vehicles, I could not stay among them. When the speech was over and we returned to our rooms, I walked removed from the group.

I did try and speak with some of my classmates about some of the things that they were saying, but they were not interested in a conversation.

This aspect of my time here is the most difficult, but I remind myself that I am not here to try and change the minds of the people I meet, even if this was a possibility. I am here to learn, and there is much to learn here.

Back in Jerusalem

For over 21 days Israel has been bombarding Gaza in ‘response’ to the rockets Hamas fires into its south. I have been in Europe, travelling and scrounging around for whatever English newspapers I could find. There have been so many deaths, so many deaths at such a disproportionate rate. The people of Gaza are dying and any security they had has been shattered.

I didn’t want to come back to this country. According to reports, most Israelis have supported their government’s actions. I’ve read the explanations and the comparisons (‘if you are in Britain and the southern regions are being showered by rockets daily, wouldn’t you defend yourself?’ etc...), but how can rational people think that this justifies what is happening? How can rational people think that a justification even exists?

I hated the idea of studying at an Israeli university as Israeli bombs rained down on Gaza. I didn’t want to live among Israelis while my Palestinian friends mourned for loved ones and lamented the carnage of the other part of their land.

Many people I met and spoke with in Europe advised against returning, and this added to my indecision. But in the end I realised it would be hypocritical to not return. How can I let myself go home without meeting and speaking with Israelis? I have always believed in dialogue, speaking with both sides – I can’t dispense with that now when it’s actually being tested.

This is my reasoning and why I have chosen to return and experience Israel, despite its horrible timing. It is difficult. I receive invitations to join ‘Boycott Israel’ groups on Facebook, and yet here I am moving into Israel and even attending one of its institutions, if only for a little while.

But for today, I am in the Old City in the Muslim Quarter. The noises outside are ‘business as usual’. I can hear shop keepers, young men and children roaming and playing on the streets, and there is even music playing an Arabic rhythm somewhere. Earlier the call to prayer rang out through the streets. There is a Mosque just outside my window and I can see its minaret against the clouded sky when I turn to the left. It is beautiful.

But there are signs that things are different from when I was here last in early December. There is more security on the streets – Israeli security vehicles are on almost every corner, their lights flashing blue. There are still tourists though, walking among the streets. I had thought that the violence in Gaza may have deterred them, but the Holy City still draws its pilgrims.

Tomorrow I will go to the university where I will be studying and it all starts from there. This is the last part of my journey, though I think it will be the hardest.