Sadeek, our first three days’ tour guide, said it. Tony, the spice shop owner, said it with pleading eyes as he carefully sealed our bags of fragrant lavender. Ali, our guide through Old Jerusalem, said it as we sat in a circle listening to tales of his time as a political prisoner. “Go home and tell your people our story” was the resounding plea. I promised I would; so here is the story of Sadeek, Tony, Ali, and the thousands of other people who live, labor, and love in the land of Palestine, where I was privileged to visit for two weeks in October.
Their story begins thousands of years ago when the land which is now home to both the Israelis and the Palestinians was inhabited by an ancient people called the Canaanites, from whom the Palestinians are descended. The Israelites (named for Abraham’s son Jacob who was later called Israel), according to modern archaeological account, branched out of the indigenous Canaanite peoples. The roots of both people groups and their cultures run deep in the dry, rocky soil; and for centuries they coexisted in peace.
Israel-Palestine has been conquered and controlled by many tribal groups and armies throughout history. Beginning with the first exile in the 8th century BCE, the ancient Israelites experienced a long period of diaspora (dispersion), which resulted in resettlement of various groups all over the globe. The following account, from the booklet “Life under Occupation” by the Joint Advocacy Initiative, sums up the movement of the Jewish people to return to their homeland.
In the late 1800s, European society was becoming increasingly anti-Semitic, and some Jewish thinkers concluded that physically escaping this discrimination was the only way to prevent it. As a result, the idea of Zionism emerged. Essentially, Zionism is the desire to return to Mount Zion, a hill in Jerusalem which is an embodiment of the Jewish faith. However, the Zionist idea to establish a Jewish state in historic Palestine was only supported by a small minority of European Jews. During World War I this dream became feasible for the first time, when Britain achieved control over Palestine and warranted the creation of a Jewish state.
That action by the British government during World War I is known as the Balfour Declaration, which reads:
His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
The British Mandate for Palestine, issued by the United Nations and made effective on 29 September 1923, established the “national home for the Jewish people” promised in the Balfour Declaration and made the U.K. the administering mandatory.
According to the Joint Advocacy Initiative, 167,000 Jewish settlers arrived in the homeland between 1882 and 1928 and another 250,000 between 1929 and 1939 (this time because of the Nazi Holocaust). In total, by the end of World War II, over half a million Jews had immigrated to the land, prompting “the uprising of the native Arab population which was being deprived of land and resources.”
In another summary from “Life under Occupation,” the Joint Advocacy Initiative explains the next few important dates and events:
Riots and violence had grown substantially by 1947, which caused the United Nations to propose a partition plan of the territories. More than half of this territory–56%–would go to the Jewish immigrants, who made up 30% of the population and owned less than 7% of the land. Despite this internationally accepted solution, the Zionists, who were superior in military power, began to forcibly remove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands. To this day this even is referred to as the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”). By May 1948 the State of Israel was proclaimed on 78% of historic Palestine.
During its “Six Day War” in June 1967, Israel eventually occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem and thus all of historical Palestine. Since that time, more land has been confiscated for erecting illegal Israeli colonies (settlements), building the Apartheid Wall, and creating military zones in these lands. As a result, Palestinian communities are isolated from the outside world and from each other.
These are the historic facts, which Sadeek reduced to their essence in a single sentence: “They fucked us.”
The situation today in every way fits the definition under international law of apartheid, and it’s time for the world to begin calling it by its proper name. Many observers and scholars have said the situation is far worse than the apartheid that existed in South Africa. Palestinians are restricted to designated areas; must go through checkpoints to enter certain other areas (and depending on the mood of the guard on duty that day may or may not be granted entry); are not permitted to use Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv (the main airport for the region); must stay on their own side of the border wall, must keep large water tanks on their roofs because their electricity (hence pumps) is sporadically turned off by Israeli power companies; live under constant threat of having their lands and livelihoods confiscated and destroyed; and endure the indignity of having settlers rain down their garbage, dirt, stones, and sometimes raw sewage into their villages and market places.
These facts are not up for argument. I have seen and experienced them first hand. I went through some of those checkpoints. I saw the trash thrown by settlers into Palestinian areas. I walked along the dividing wall. I saw the armed Israeli soldiers everywhere we went. I heard instructions shouted over loud speakers. I saw the balloons holding surveillance cameras. I picked olives for Palestinian farmers because the Israeli soldiers would have prevented them from working their own land and then after a year have legal justification for confiscating that land because it had not been worked. I walked through a Palestinian refugee camp. I twice visited a Bedouin village under order of demolition and witnessed hundreds of advocates who slept on foam mats to support the villagers and stave off destruction. (And they’ve succeeded, for now.) Although as an American I am permitted to use Ben Gurion Airport, I dare not take anything into that airport which might suggest that I intend to visit Palestinian territory or leave with any mementos easily recognized as having come from Palestine. I received my shipment this week of items I mailed home because I’d have possibly been detained at Ben Gurion if they’d been found in my luggage.
The displacement of native Palestinians is the largest and longest-standing displacement of a population in the history of the world. Currently, 66% of Palestinian people live as displaced persons, divided into two categories: refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP). Refugees are those who escape or are driven to other countries; IDPs are those who remain in the land. The difference between the two groups is geographic only; there is no difference in human rights between the two. The one right Palestinians crave most deeply is the right to live in dignity; I heard those words from the lips of almost everyone I met.
Please allow me to introduce you to three of the people I met and share with you just a little bit of their stories.
Sadeek Khoury, as I mentioned before, was our guide for the first three days during our touring time. He took us, among other places, to the village of Iqrit, now only the rubble of what was once the home of 400 Palestinians who lived, loved, made babies, raised their young, cared for their old, and buried their dead high on a windy hilltop. That peaceful life ended in 1951 when Israeli forces showed up and ordered everyone out of the village; it was for only two weeks, they said, so that security measures could be implemented (“For security” is a phrase often used to justify actions by the Israeli government). As soon as the evacuation was complete, the village was bombed. Now all that remains are the church and the cemetery.
College students take shifts staying at the church round the clock so that former villagers and their descendants can continue to hold their life rituals in the ancestral sacred place. Down the long, rocky trail and over the barbed-wire fence is the ancient cemetery where new crypts have been added to the mausoleums as recently as 2017.
Sadeek is earnest as he lingers on the hilltop, choosing that place to spread the table for the lunch he and his wife had prepared, allowing his charges to soak up the essence of the place, making sure no one would leave without having established an indelible connection with the spirit of the past and the souls whose lives were represented there.
Ali Muhammad was our guide through the Old City of Jerusalem. His ancestors came from Chad, in Africa, and he lives in the Afro-Palestinian sector of Old Jerusalem. He walks slowly, using a cane for balance, and is a tough school master. Anyone caught in a private conversation or shopping the goods which surrounded us in the market would be brought back to class in a deep-voiced gentle reprimand.
Ali strolled us through the market, pointing out the various sites of historical interest, but for what he really wanted us to know, he took us to the privacy of his apartment. There, he told us of his 17 years as a political prisoner for participating in placing a bomb in 1968 when he was a young man. From his more mature perspective, he knows that “the work I’m doing now is more effective than placing bombs.” The work he’s doing now is informing and educating those of us who consistently hear only one side of the narrative regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and I have to agree, knowledge is far more effective than violence.
Other snippets from Ali include his assessment that the only solution to their problem is not a two-state solution, which he says would never work, but “one secular democratic state” which would extend equal rights to residents of all ethnicities and faiths. He also said the media in our country is bullshit, because they continue to tell only the one-sided Zionist narrative. He also gave us the Arabic word for “bullshit,” but I’m not sure of the spelling, and you’d really have to hear him pronounce it for full appreciation. He challenged us to speak to our representatives, since the continued apartheid is made possible primarily by aid from the United States and Russia. He encouraged us to keep up BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) of companies that promote and fund the oppressive regime. He said, “Your holy mission is not here. Go back to your country and tell what you have seen here.” The majority of settlers (colonists) are American Jews. Palestinian desires are simple: no more occupation and the ability to live their lives in peace and dignity. All Palestinian protests currently are peaceful, but Israeli responses are not. The army and the settlers continue to inflict violence and death on unarmed Palestinians.
Ali ended his talk with a humorous assessment of several of our recent presidents. He said President Clinton had a serious problem in the lower part of his body, President Bush (W) had a serious problem in the upper part of his body, and Donald Trump has problems “both up and down.” You may have guessed, DT is not at all popular in Palestine.
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, perhaps the clearest and most compelling speaker I heard, said 100,000 Palestinians have been killed and another 800,000 injured since the conflict began. He has been arrested more than a dozen times for petty offenses. He advocates non-violent resistance but emphasizes that there must be resistance and that no one can be neutral on a situation involving the rights of hundreds of thousands of human beings.
Mazin echoed Ali’s assessment that the only viable solution to the problems is a single democratic, secular state with equal rights for all. He went on to explain that colonization can never end in a two-state solution because colonizers can never recognize the rights of the colonized. To recognize those rights would cause their system (existence, power) to collapse.
He outlined three possible stable outcomes:
One, the colonizers can be kicked out and sent to Europe, as happened in Algeria.
Two, there can be genocide of the colonized population, as has been done in Australia and the United States.
Three, and most common, colonizers and colonized can live together in peace, as has happened in over 140 countries.
At the end of our almost ill-fated walk along the highway in search of the Bedouin village which we had visited once and had been invited to revisit, we sat on foam mats and listened to a former PLO member, also a political prisoner for ten years (and three days), who told us more about the horror of living under apartheid and who said he will forgo having children so that he can devote his entire life to the mission of ending his people’s oppression.
One of our bus tour guides nearly sputtered with anger and indignation as we passed one of the large red signs marking the divisions of the West Bank into three zones: Palestinian, Israeli, and both. The sign for Zone A, the Palestinian zone, warns Israelis that they are forbidden to enter because their lives would be in danger. Our guide said it’s one thing to forbid Israelis to enter but another altogether to warn them of danger, “as if we’re animals.” The assault on his people’s dignity cuts deep.
A man I met on our first visit to Khan al-Ahmar was there with other activists trying to stay the demolition. He is an Israeli citizen who lives in Tel Aviv but is passionately committed to justice and equality for Palestinians. He said about 65% of Israeli citizens favor equality; it’s the government and a minority of private citizens who keep up the oppression. No one in our group, including the leadership and the leaders of the Palestinian activist organizations, hates Jewish people or wants to give Palestinians freedom and justice by taking it away from Israelis. Everyone I met wants the same rights to be held by all who live in the “Holy Land.”
I met Palestinian farmers and looked into their eyes, eyes that beamed back love and gratitude, because our efforts will assist them in holding onto their ancestral lands awhile longer.
Everywhere I went I met beautiful children, playful and happy and loved in spite of their oppression and poverty. Arriving at Khan al-Ahmar, the Bedouin village, at dusk, our group was greeted by children riding donkeys and bicycles and playing happily in our meeting area; doing normal “kid things,” they could have been in any country anywhere in the world.
I’m not telling you things I read in a textbook or in U.S. media reports. I saw firsthand what oppression and apartheid look like. It’s uglier than anyone can imagine without seeing it; and it’s enabled largely by aid from the U.S. and Russia. Let that sink in, and remember it every time you vote.
I affirmed with my own senses that Arabs and Muslims are, as a group, not violent terrorists. Two Muslim women will flag down seven American and British women lost on a busy highway and guide them to their destination. Muslims and Arabs are warm, loving, well-educated (among the most well educated in the world), well-spoken, industrious people whose only wish is to live their lives in dignity and peace. They open their arms, open their homes, and spread their tables and ask only one thing in return: please go and tell your people our story.
This is what I know to be true: I know that a promise from God will never come with license to oppress another group of human beings. If claiming a promise necessitates harassing, demeaning, imprisoning, killing, surveilling, restricting free movement, interfering with the pursuit of livelihood, stealing ancestral lands, and demolishing ancient habitats, one of two things is true. Either the promise did not really come from God, or some human beings are manipulating their religion as a weapon to gain power and control–actions which are the polar opposite of anything I know about God.
Now it’s up to you to keep the story going. Please share the story with everyone you know. Share this article in every forum you possibly can. This is not anti-Semitism (Arabs are also Semites); it’s pro-justice. Justice for ALL.