5/15
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| "Happy Eid" |
It is Eid, then end of Ramadan. Usually a time of celebration and happiness for the Muslim community. But not this Eid, this Thursday.
Every Thursday throughout the pandemic I have joined weekly study and prayer service with the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. With most of the participants from the Palestinian Christian community, others join in from around the world. Not surprisingly, the gathering last Thursday was filled with anguish and sadness as the Israel-Palestine conflict once again enters a new phase of violence.
While there is no question that rockets flying into your country create a sense of fear and vulnerability, Trevor Noah of the Daily Show has rightly pointed out that ultimately you have to ask the question of who has then power to do what to whom when. The overwhelming imbalance of power militarily and every other way make any attempt at “moral equivalence” simply inappropriate.
While determining justice in any particular moment of this conflict depends on when you start the clock, the previous owners of the Sheik Jarrah properties were in fact Jews, every other detail from the lack of a “law of return”,for Palestinians or compensation for land lost in West Jerusalem to lack of building permits squeezing East Jerusalem Palestinians into ever more constricted areas objectively do constitute an apartheid reality.
It’s hard to pontificate about a “right to defend one’s country” in the context of a policy clearly aimed at making a viable life for Palestinians in Jerusalem impossible.
On my last visit to Jerusalem in 2010, my friend Arik Ascherman, Executive Director of Israel human rights organization Torah Zedek, Torah of Justice, took us on a tour of Sheik Jarrah, the East Jerusalem neighborhood at the center of this moment of the conflict. We mat families, heard their stories, as of theihouses they had lived in for half a century. The effort to evict them is not about retributive justice for any wounded party but more to create more real estate for ultra right Israeli settlement and further shrinking of Palestinian space. This particular chapter has been going on now for decades and is now before the Israeli supreme court.
The same day as our Sheikh Jarrah tour we participated in protest against the digit up of a Palestinian cemetery to build a “museum of tolerance.” No comment necessary. Eleven years later, the project nears completion. The bones of over 400 Palestinian bodies have been removed.
IN 1978, I toured Gaza in the wake of the Sadat - Begin agreement. The images I retain are of crowded streets, docks filled with rotting oranges embargoed against export and a giant Israeli watch tower looming over the city like an alien war machine. Even under Palestinian authority, Gaza remains in a state of continued strangulation.
Describing the current reality, people in our meeting use words like “unbelievable” and “out of control.” “Worst we’ve seen in 35 years.” The intercomunal violence has people shaken, “like a civil war” they say, “Neighbor against neighbor.” We see a cell phone video of a right wing Israeli Lynch mob looking for Arabs in a West Jerusalem market with passive police accompaniment.
I think of my friend David from Kibbutz Gezer and the meals we have shared in the Arab town of Ramle. His friend Samir’s restaurant, featured in “Hummus: the Movie,” arguably the best in the country. What is going on in Ramle? Friends in Jerusalem afraid to leave their homes.
It’s a hard issue to talk about tin the US. Support for lsrael runs very deep. Lobby groups like AIPAC seem to wield as much influence over Congress as the NRA. Conservative Evangelicals see Israel as part of a “divine plan” and offer unquestioning support. Traditional liberals are most likely to fall into the PEP (“progressive except Palestine”) circle. Others, ignoring power differentials, argue moral equivalence. In Congress except for Bernie Sanders and AOC and the Squad, it’s an undebatable issue. This current crisis will make President Biden’s desire to avoid the issue untenable.
Despite international pressure and feelers from Hamas to enact a truce, Israel wants to “teach a lesson,” still not understanding that humiliation whether harassment at check points or massive bombing never works.
The bottom line reality is, Israel is only able to continue its position of dominance and control because of the annual $4 billion support from the US. Sooner or later we need to take accountability for the fact that we are funding the current reality of Israel-Palestine Increasing numbers of analysts think it is too late for a two state solution already. One way or another, US citizens have to take responsibility and hold Israel accountable. That’s the only way for peace to have a chance…
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