Something I think is worth doing

This summer I spent two weeks in Israel and Palestine, mostly in the West Bank. The group I traveled with, Interfaith Peace Builders, met with people from all sides of the conflict there, and had first-hand experience of the way people are treating each other. It left me somewhat radicalized, but not necessarily in the ways you might imagine. I didn’t end up more “pro-Palestinian,” or more “pro-Israeli.” In fact, I came to the conclusion that those terms are outdated.

What I am, if we have to put a label on it, is anti-occupation. I think the occupation is damaging everyone involved, Israelis as well as Palestinians. It is the nature of oppression that it oppresses everyone, even the oppressors, and this oppression must end, for the good of all.

This is a short video of the Shministim, who are young Israelis refusing to serve in the Israeli military on grounds of conscience. They are going to jail because of it. Below the video is an online petition that you can sign if you feel so moved.

Gandhi said that he believed in the goodness of the British people and wanted to show them their own injustice, believing that when injustice is sufficiently exposed, people stand up against it. In retrospect, he was right. I believe in the goodness of the Israeli people as well, and in fact, many do stand against the occupation, as I do.

Shalom and Salaam,

David

Sign the petition

An article about the Middle East trip

This article about my trip to Israel and Palestine came out in the Asheville Citizen-Times this past weekend. There are a few things I would change in it, but I’m really grateful to the reporter, Leslie Boyd, for her time and for giving attention to the issue.

http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200880919019

As for the things I would tweak, I’ll spell them out, because they matter.

• The photo was taken by Madeleine Rowe, who was on the trip with me, and I think it’s one of the best pictures to come out of the trip. She deserves credit for that, but that’s not the only issue with the text below the photo, which reads “Palestinian children climb on an old fence. The barriers protecting Israel are making life difficult for ordinary Palestinians, David LaMotte says.”

I did say that the wall is making life difficult for Palestinians, but I wouldn’t really characterize it as protecting Israel. One of the main misconceptions we have about the wall is that it divides Israel from the West Bank, like the wall between East and West Germany.

It doesn’t.

The 1967 border between Israel and Palestine is referred to as the Green Line, and is recognized by most people as the natural border between the two, though ongoing settlement in the West Bank is making any possibility of a contiguous Palestine increasingly unlikely.

The wall is three times as long as the Green Line, and only a small portion of it runs along the Green Line. Most of the wall runs deep into land that most of the world recognizes as Palestinian, and the vast majority of it separates Palestinians from Palestinians, and from their own fields, schools, families and neighbors. It sometimes nearly completely encircles Palestinian villages.

It is true that suicide attacks have decreased since the wall went up, but I don’t believe that the humiliation and degradation of Palestinians is good for Israel in the long run. It breeds desperation and rage, which contribute to terrorism.

• The article begins “David LaMotte has had a successful career as a musician, but his faith has led him in an entirely different direction.” We could debate the success of my music career, of course. More importantly, though, I’d like to think that the new path isn’t an entirely new direction, and though my faith is a big part of why I’m choosing this path, it’s only one part among many.

• “Olive tree groves believed to be thousands of years old are being ripped out to make room for the wall that separates the Israeli and Palestinian people.” Again, for the most part, it doesn’t, though it’s true about the thousands of olive trees that have been destroyed.

OK, there you go. My rebuttal to myself.

Salaam and shalom…

Who is my neighbor?

One of the most disturbing elements of the occupation of Palestine is the separation of Israeli Jews from Palestinians. Early in the trip we had an evening meeting with five students from Hebrew University who represented a broad spectrum of political views in Israeli society. The conversation was lively and there was plenty of respectful disagreement.

One thing they all agreed on, though, is that almost no Israeli Jews their age knew any Palestinians personally. They might have conversations in shops while trying to buy something, but had never in their lives sat down to have a substantive conversation.

As we continued the trip, I continued to ask this question of various people, whether they had ever had a real friend who was Palestinian, or a Jewish friend if they were Palestinian). Time and again I was met with confirmation of a staggering level of separation in Israeli society. Jimmy Carter caught a great deal of heat for using the word ‘apartheid’ in his recent book about Israel and Palestine, but it is at least technically defensible, given that apartheid is simply the word for “separation” in the language of Afrikaans, and there is no reasonable person who could deny a staggering level of separation in Israel and Palestine.

There are legal and logistical barriers to people knowing each other, as well as social, political and cultural divisions. Israeli citizens are legally prohibited from visiting Palestinian controlled areas, and Palestinians from the West Bank must obtain permits to visit Israeli controlled areas (these permits are frequently denied, and often not honored even after they are obtained. Checkpoints may or may not let them through, or even be open).

It seems to me that this kind of separation is almost guaranteed to thwart any efforts at building peace, which is necessarily predicated on a sense of knowing one another. If we can’t have our own personal experience of each other as human beings, we are left with the extremist versions of each other that the extremists on our own side of the issue feed us, and progress is nearly impossible.

We had a presentation and meeting with David Wilder, a representative of the Jewish ideological settlement in Hebron. He spoke with us for a little over an hour and a half and told a lot of stories, including one to illustrate his belief that the true goal of Muslims is to set up their international capitol city in Washington, DC. Yep, Washington, DC. As we left, it occurred to me that every story he told of a non-Jew, including Muslims and Christians, involved extremists — both real and imagined. It seemed to me that Mr. Wilder has no experience of or belief in the existence of moderate Muslims or sane Christians.

We heard a couple of voices from the Palestinian side that were almost as dismissive as Mr. Wilder, saying “We could live in peace with them again as we once did, but they will never live in peace with us.” Thankfully, we also heard much saner voices on the trip, from across the political spectrum. The pattern seemed to hold, though: the saner voices were voices of those who actually *knew* some people well from the other side of the divide.

Dialog isn’t enough, and it’s non-productive if it serves only to justify the status quo. It seems to me that it is an essential part of moving forward, though. The power structures on all sides will be reluctant to move toward peace until the civil societies on all sides demand it, which will only happen when we stop believing the extremist rhetoric. That will only happen when we come to know each other.

Nazareth

Nazareth

This week has been astoundingly dense and deeply emotional.  Two days into the trip I already felt like my experience had been worth the effort and expense. I had no idea how each of the following days would multiply that impression.

I’ve tried three times to start this update with a story from the trip, and each time I’ve found that the stories open onto a flood of other stories, questions and observations — it’s hard to be succinct when writing about an experience this rich.

So for now I won’t tell a story, I’ll just explain that though I knew before I came that this situation was profoundly complicated and intricate, I have found it exponentially more so than I could have imagined.

Perhaps more importantly, I’ve been struck by the strong sense that the intricacy of the issues does not excuse me from standing for justice wherever I find it to be lacking. 

People of faith, especially those of the Abrahamic traditions (Christians, Jews and Muslims), have a duty to educate ourselves about the issue and advocate for just policies. Moreover, U.S. citizens have a duty to inform ourselves, given that we live in a democracy, and that we are paying a significant part of the cost of the occupation with our tax dollars.  As Rabbi Heschel said, “In a democratic society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

We’ve had almost non-stop meetings and vivid experiences on this trip, from a briefing by the UN to conversations with right wing Zionists to visits in Palestinian homes slated for demolition by the government. We’ve walked through an Israeli checkpoint and talked with the founder of Rabbis for Human Rights and the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions.

All of it has broken my heart, but I hope and believe that those cracks are letting some Light in. If you’re one who offers prayers of any kind, I humbly request some for myself, as well as for the people of the Middle East.

You’ll notice, though (at least when I point it out), that when I said the conflict was complicated, I said “profoundly complicated,” not “hopelessly complicated,” as we so often hear. When we met with Abir Kopty this morning (a young Palestinian, human rights activist and Coptic Christian) she said “We learned, as Palestinians, ‘You are not allowed to lose hope. This is not your right.’” 

To that, I say “Sah,” which in Arabic means “that’s right.”  As Vaclav Havel said, “Hope is not prognostication, it is an orientation of the spirit.”

A movie recommendation

In preparation for my trip to Israel and Palestine next week, last night Deanna and I watched a movie called “Encounter Point.” I highly recommend it.

It’s a documentary about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and though it doesn’t flinch from portraying and engaging the depth and severity of the problem at any point, it’s a heartening portrait of a handful of Israeli and Palestinian non-violent activists (almost all of whom have lost someone in their own families) and the work they’re doing.

What I’m trying to say is that it strikes an impressive balance between education and inspiration, and a strong practical argument for non-violence in this situation. It’s not the kind of movie you have to dread and watch out of some sense of civic responsibility — it’s actually both grounded and encouraging at the same time.

If you want to check it out, Netflix has it here, and the web site for the movie is here (and there are trailers to check out online at the movie web site).

So if you’re interested in why I’m going to Israel and Palestine in the middle of my wife’s pregnancy, I think this movie may be the best answer I can give you.