” After all the suffering, all the losses. I choose to forgive. I choose to forgive because I am not weak.”
This quote is scribbled at the top of the last page of one of the journals I kept while in the Palestinian Occupied Territories this winter. I am not certain who said it, but as it is 3 am Middle East time as I write this, I will find out tomorrow. That quote inspires this post.
Coming back to the USA has been difficult. At first I thought I was just worn out, especially since I had been so sick my last two weeks with a cough that had me in bed for nearly a week. I slept for eight days upon my arrival to my native soil. However, it is clear that it is more than recovery from a physical wearing down from illness. There is a shock that settles in after you get back from a place where you see suffering. The experiences begin to permeate the conscious, subconscious. This is no news to any veteran . I experienced no personal attacks, nor made any. I saw no bloodshed. Yet here it is. A struggle to return to “normal life”.
I stayed in Israel first. I toured gorgeous ancient churches. I zoomed around in a souped up Subaru through the 2 a m streets of Haifa with my friend’s nephew, Dire Straits beating from the stereo, me practically screaming in laughter and surprise. Arabs and Jews seemed to live peacefully, though my time was mainly spent with Christian Arabs. And Jerusalem. I loved it. It seemed so westernized, as so much of Israel is. I could enjoy my mocha lattes in the open sidewalk cafes, tour the Old City and buy Kanafee and souvenirs. Ok, yea, so there were armed soldiers all over the place. On the train that travels up Jaffa Street, they sat texting away, loaded weapons laying across their laps. What was the problem? My hosts told me how good Israel was. How Israel never kills Arabs unless on the defensive, and then, with much regret. This included the West Bank. And certainly, I could not see any differently from there. Not yet.
A bus ride through a checkpoint is all it takes to cross from one reality to another.
Palestinian Occupied Territories Take a deep breath.
It is ruggedly beautiful.
You have to get the bus to Ramallah. Watch the landscape of hills dropping off into cliffs. You wind around hairpin turns, up roads so steep you become grateful there is not snow or ice. The city greets you with dust and trash and piles of rubble. In the city proper the main bus stop is like a big gravel parking lot with buses and taxis lined up, leaving, pulling in, people waiting to board and arriving. I took a left out of the lot and walked down the sidewalks. Stores open on to the street with stacks of merchandise outside. Wagons parked by the street with loads of strawberries meticulously arranged in pyramids. . I learned most of these strawberries came from Gaza. Vendors with little carts selling corn in paper cups, coffee, fava beans, falafel, and sweets. This is Palestine!! The energy has shifted in to overdrive! It gets denser as you walk deeper in. ASHARA ASHARA ASHARA merchants yell out from their stands of vegetables, fruits, Oh my God. I still want to cry. It is so authentic.
I am spotted immediately as a foreigner . ” Where you from?” over and over I am asked. “America! ” “Welcome.” Every single time.
A reality so well hidden from my friends in Israel slowly began to be revealed. A reality so well hidden from the United States came to grab me like a fierce vice grips. How can we not know these things I began to see?. I began to really look. I became a listener. I sat at many dinner tables. I walked the streets for hours, invited in nearly every single time for coffee by a stranger who I would happen to engage in conversation. The Occupation unfolded itself to me as a witness to the stories of the ordinary people on the street.
From the Occupied Territories I have stories of babies in utero dying from poison gas attacks by Israeli Soldiers . Of children being killed by settlers. I saw soldiers in the streets of my friend’s neighborhood, watched as a young man was up against a wall at night, spotlight on him, armed soldiers making him lift his shirt, pull down his socks, for no apparent reason. I was temporarily detained at a checkpoint a couple hours after a 20 year old Palestinian woman had been shot because she walked too close to the where the cars came through the checkpoint, instead of near the walking gate. Mothers in different towns all told me the same thing, of how they were always afraid when they sent their children off to school. The wall, the graffiti, the razor wire, the watch towers dotting the roads and the hillsides, the traffic, the trash… soldiers looking at the old woman on the bus sharing my seat, who could have been my grandmother, as if she was nothing.
And the kindness. The hospitality of those who invited me to stay with them, even as I was a stranger to them as they were to me. The plates of hummus, lebany, makloubeh, tabouli, za’atar, tomatoes and cucumbers, the native and freshly pressed olive oil, cups of sweet,sweet, and sweeter hot tea with sage leaves, thick cardamon coffee, and endless pita bread.
Going back in to Israel with a new understanding, I began talking to Jewish Israelis. I made friends with a Zionist who felt that that Israel could do and has done no wrong. He invited me to his home and was gracious, knowing I had a project in Gaza. A ex-soldier in her mid-twenties said this: “They brainwash us until we are 18 years old, and then put us in the military. When we get out, we can’t live with ourselves after what we have done.” She advised me to watch the film Breaking The Silence. A young woman from Australia told me about how her grandfather had lost 12 family members in the Holocaust. To this day, she told me, he let no one in the family drive or even get in a German car. She also told me how she had been teased in school for being Jewish. Yet she was studying Islam and the Koran because she wanted peace. I was told that because I spoke English and no Hebrew, I would mostly be talking to less conservative Jews, and they wanted peace. Non english speakers were the conservatives who had voted in Netanyahu. Not a single Jew I spoke with about peace believed their government wanted it. But every single one of them did. Some are now my advocates, going to bat for me as I move ahead with my mission.
So whose side am I on?
It is hard. It is so hard. I see the injustice in Palestine, the grace in which people live under direct oppression. I read the ignorant comments on various pro-Israel news sites and blogs from Americans who have never been there calling Palestinians less than human. I know Palestinians who have been jailed, tortured, lost children, been threatened and humiliated with no recourse whatsoever tell me they just want to be free. I know mainstream media in Israel and the USA do not carry the stories of these people. The media carries stories of suicide bombers, stabbings, and missiles fired all against Israel. True enough, tragedy lies on both sides of the checkpoints.
But I also see that as soon as one takes sides in this situation, there is no chance of peace for anyone. Every time someone makes a racist comment about Jews, an ethnic “joke” or slur, the cause to have an exclusive Jewish homeland is strengthened. Every person who says Israel can do as she pleases, the Jews are God’s chosen, condones an insidious violence that they don’t even know exists. And if they do, they should be careful about playing God and judging which humans are worthy. This wreaks of the same supremacy that caused the Holocaust. I hope you see why the quote that started this post is so impressive.
I personally know what it is like to recover from paralyzing illness. My recovery was the result of a miracle.The two years prior to this healing had been particularly painful. I tried my best to hide my desperation from the outside world, but I was on the verge of giving up. I had almost stopped trying. After all, my my diagnosis had no cure. I took an online course with Jean Houston, and I was literally following one of the exercises in it to a tee, dancing wildly with joy in every cell of my body when I experienced a spontaneous healing. True story. But I found that even though the symptoms are gone, my body still has to recover from the damage that was incurred. And that life and death go on mercilessly and mercifully. But I know that miracles in seemingly impossible circumstances can happen.
If peace happens today, spontaneously and miraculously, the wounds will still be there. Deep work on healing trauma, forgiving, economic restructuring, what a list. Life and death will still go on mercilessly, and mercifully.
But there are peace advocates everywhere, doing this work now. People working to heal generations of wounding. People stepping in with all their courage and talents to do the right and humane actions even as the weapons machinery industry profits magnificently and peace seems hopelessly doomed for all the greed and stupidity associated with war.
Those are who I stand with. Scholars, artists, taxi drivers, homemakers, psychotherapists, agronomists, lawyers, etc. etc. we are a collective. A collection of people that believe in the possibility of a world that is inclusive and united with every strand of DNA. With you. Dance Wildly my friend. Even the soaring and still wings of a seagull riding the wind currents are dancing wildly with the air. Dance in your stillness, dance as you stand painting, or sit writing, or teach yoga. Dance naked in the moonlight in your bedroom. Dance Wildly. Invoke Humanity. Illuminate Possibility. Believe the Miracle.