[sumud: resistance]

I have been in Occupied Palestine for a week and a half now. And it's glorious. People are friendly, the landscape is positively incredible, the food is delicious, the Arabic gorgeous and nuanced, and my work is challenging and fulfilling. I am teaching music (voice and piano) to kids in individual lessons at a music center in Nablus, and we begin group music classes at a local primary school tomorrow.



I have passed by many checkpoints, but only gone through two of them. One was unmanned and I walked through the maze of turnstiles, and other was manned by a barely legal Israeli girl who giggled and flirted over the loudspeaker with the male volunteer with whom I was traveling. There was also a gruff 30-something man who simply waved me past when I flashed my U.S. passport.

I spent hours walking along the separation wall in Bethlehem and trying not to tear up at the graffiti (pictures to come). I also picked up a fabulous book called 'Challenging the Wall: Towards a Pedagogy of Hope' which contains case studies, academic analysis, interviews, etc., about the separation wall and it's role on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.




I crossed into "East Jerusalem" from "West Jerusalem" and the discrepancy was shocking. One crosses the street near Damascus Gate (Bab el-Aamoud) and immediately the signs are in Arabic and the voices speak Arabic.

So far I've managed to figure out how to take a serveece (like a cross between a taxi and a bus), order my daily felafel sandwich, and talk to my kids to see how their days have been. I also know my way around the Old City, how to cook in a gas-lit oven (my cake turned out fabulously), and how to ignore the 'how are yous' and the 'what's your name' and the 'i love yous' shouted at me from all directions whenever I walk down the street.

Crazy adventures:
-hiking Wadi Qelt near Areha (Jericho) at sunrise
-making friends with the owners/10-month old daughter of the restaurant in Areha
-being invited for tea by the neighbor kids, which turned into dinner, which turned into shisha on the roof
-baking/inventing a delicious cake in our gas-lit stove
-stumbling upon the PLO Negotiations headquarters, eating lunch there, and then forcing the guards to take my cake
-being in the main square of Nablus during the rally when Abbas was speaking to the UN
-observing the Via Dolorosa walk in the Old City of Jerusalem
-sharing a seat with an older woman and her granddaughter on a serveece to Ramallah
-leaving the Bethlehem Couchsurfer host's place at 3 AM and wandering around the city
-befriending four policemen in Bethlehem and being invited to cook lunch with them in their bachelor pad across from the Church of the Nativity
-leaving my mark on the separation wall

And three more months to come!

Palestine is a beautiful country. It is NOT scary. It is NOT dangerous. It is NOT full of Muslim terrorists.




...it's full of Jewish terrorists. Not that all Jews are terrorists, and not that all Israelis are terrorists. But the people in Palestine who are terrorizing Palestinians are Jewish Israelis.


It's full of Israeli teenagers toting guns, as well as armed Jewish settlers who assault regular Palestinians on a daily basis. It is also full of American-financed systematic oppression and intimidation of an entire people. It is full of brave, persistent, courageous, normal families whose every breath constitutes an act of resistance. Many people have made a choice to stay here in Palestine, or to immigrate here, to an occupied territory where their very lives and the lives of their loved ones are threatened and where their existence is denied by major players in the international community.

Palestine is a peaceful place. People are tired of violence, but they are actively demanding their right to self-determination regardless of what international leaders, Palestinian leaders, and Israeli leaders are doing behind the scenes.

One can understand nothing about a place until it is experienced for oneself, and that understanding will change every minute as the situation itself changes. Palestine is not static. Palestine is dynamic, in constant change and adaptation with the requirements of daily life and the whims of the State of Israel as well as the ignorance and cowardice of the international community.

Visit Palestine! Or at the very least educate yourself. There's so much to love here.

[the vernacular of the visionless]

My alma mater, Smith College, is currently hosting a small group of current students in Israel for a summer of participation in one of several Global Engagement Seminars. Students are invited to contribute to an official Smith blog as they travel, expand their horizons, complete internships, and talk with the locals.

A few weeks ago, an entry was posted titled "Words Matter," by Katy Swartz, '13. The piece discusses the use of the word 'apartheid' in describing contemporary Israel, and the author believes that 'apartheid' is an inaccurate and damaging characterization of Israel's policies. She cites a letter from the Vanguard Leadership Group that states,

"The use of the word 'apartheid' by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in its characterization of Israel is patently false and deeply offensive to all who feel a connection to the state of Israel. Your organization's campaign against Israel is spreading misinformation about its policies, fostering bias in the media, and jeopardizing prospects for a timely resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

I'm going to re-state her main points, and show where Katy has gone wrong.

The main points, as I understood them, were that 'apartheid' cannot be applied to Israel because of the following reasons:

• 'Apartheid' refers to race, and "Judaism is not a race"
• 20% of Israel's citizens are Arab, and they have "full and equal rights under Israeli law"
• If Israel were racist against Arabs, it would not act justly toward its own Arab-Israeli citizens on the one hand, but unjustly toward Arabs and Palestinians elsewhere
• Self-governance, as the author defines the presence of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza, would not occur under apartheid
• "An apartheid regime would...[wish] to remain sovereign over the group it were oppressing because it would likely be benefiting from the forced labor of the citizens"

The author also makes the following (I think, problematic) statements:

• Palestinians were offered a two-state solution and rejected it; as such, they are implicitly to blame
• Palestinians were offered citizenship in East Jerusalem and "refuse[d] to participate in the city government"
• "Israel is still committed to the establishment of the state of Palestine in the Palestinian territories"
• Israel's recent 'control' policies are "a result of Palestinians blowing up innocent Israeli civilians (which of course did not happen in South Africa)"
• "Israel remains dedicated to finding a solution within the parameters that allow for the Jewish state to remain in existence alongside a future Palestinian state"

Well. Let's unpack some of this, shall we?

First of all, some background on the author:

Katy Swartz will be a junior at Smith next year, self-identifies as an orthodox Jew, and is a Jewish Studies major at Smith. By no means am I claiming that Jews are innately unable to make valid contributions to this conversations (and, as Lucas Koerner proved, Jewish ethics can be a large motivating factor to stand with the Palestinians), but I believe that knowing an author's background is an essential part of understanding their belief system and teasing apart their biases.

She is on this summer program with other Smith students of varying opinions and identities surrounding the conflict. I'm sure the experience may at times feel threatening to her beliefs and her identity. I applaud Katy for attempting to engage in these difficult conversations, and for making public her opinions and her frustrations.

Katy was raised in a Jewish household (see above interview) and I have seen her, along with other student members of the Smith Israel Alliance, at many related events on campus. I particularly remember her presence at a presentation by scholar and author Norman Finkelstein on campus in Spring 2011. She and her peers put up posters from CAMERA on the doors to the venue where Finkelstein was speaking, and handed them out to folks as they entered the building.

These fliers are despicable, shabby, inaccurate, discriminatory pieces of literature with a Zionist agenda and absolutely no constructive or intellectual value, in my opinion, and in the opinion of others, including Uri Strauss with the Palestine Action Coalition (see his piece on apartheid and Israel here and note his comment on Katy's post here).

Here's the flier (from CAMERA)... And here's Finkelstein (from his website)

The flier from CAMERA purposefully utilizes a photograph of a gun-toting, turban-wearing, bearded Arab man for shock value, and coercively manipulates the viewer into associating Finkelstein with the fear and hatred of 'the Arab'. It utilizes the color pink in a way that suggests that Finkelstein is effeminate or gay, and subversively uses homosexuality as a reason to discredit Finkelstein's academic and intellectual value (indeed, when typing 'Norman Finkelstein' into Google, 'Norman Finkelstein gay' pops up). More crucially, the flier contains biased sources and surface-level answers that are absolutely inappropriate and disrespectful to the event and to the speaker and the hosting organizations. I hold anyone who hands out these fliers responsible for their message.

Uri Strauss, currently the Law Fellow with Western Mass. American Friends Service Committee, published an article in 2002 titled "Defining Apartheid: Israel's Record." Strauss points out that 'race' is widely interpreted under UN Conventions, and would include Jews as a race. We cannot use the technicality of language to allow occupiers and human rights abusers to escape responsibility. I would suggest that perhaps genocide is a more accurate description, as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2:

"any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Whether or not Judaism is considered a race, Israel is still upholding blatantly discriminatory and abusive policies.

Katy's second point about the "full and equal rights under Israeli law" for Arab citizens of Israel is simply incorrect. The Arab citizens of Israel have been subject to consistent and repressive policies since the founding of the state of Israel, including land grabs, racist laws, home demolitions, forced migration (see this article from Middle East Monitor). Even if Arab citizens of Israel were treated like royalty, this has no bearing whatsoever on the treatment of other Palestinians within the borders that Israel currently claims.

Her next point (that a racist regime does not pick and choose where it practices racism) is ridiculous. Any racist act by a regime means it is a racist regime, in the same way that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere" (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.). Sure, everyone's a little bit racist sometimes from a sociological perspective, but we're not all committing systemic genocide on a societal level.

Katy also states that self-governance would not occur under apartheid. Firstly, self-governance can absolutely occur under apartheid (Bantustan, anyone?). In addition, the Palestinian Authority has been perceived by Palestinians to be corrupt, unrepresentative, and unsupported and disrespected by the majority of the outside world. The PA may wear the mask of self-governance, but it does NOT represent genuine self-governance.

She also makes the point that an apartheid regime would wish to remain sovereign over the oppressed group to benefit from its forced labor. Israel either DOES implicitly benefit from cheap Palestinian labor, with crowds of men sitting near roads hoping to land a temporary menial labor job with a passing Israeli, OR the ridiculous permit system in combination with checkpoints prohibit Palestinians from having good jobs within Israel or within the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

For me, Katy's analysis relies on a lack of historical understanding of what power dynamics, collective memory, cultural narratives, and 'resistance' mean, and more specifically what these terms mean to Palestinians. Decades of mistreatment and neglect from the majority of the international community have created generations of Palestinians that are struggling with notions of identity and homeland. Many Palestinians still hold the deeds to land inside Israel. Millions of Palestinians have been born outside the holy land, but still identify with the history, the myth, and the physical place of Palestine. Without a fully functioning, recognized, supported government, and subject to all forms of economic sanctions, physical and mental abuse, I wonder how Katy recommends that Palestinians reconcile their past, their present and their abusers, and their dreams for a future.

Arundhati Roy describes it well, saying

"Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation."

Palestinian suicide bombers are resisting occupation and humiliation. I do not condone violence against anyone or anything, but I understand why certain parties are behaving and reacting in the ways that they do; as Arundhati Roy says, they are 'resisting annihilation'.

Katy also explains that Israel is not committing the crime of apartheid, but rather utilizing 'control' strategies as a result of "Palestinians blowing up innocent Israeli civilians." The destruction of human life (or animal life, or natural forms of life, in my opinion) is never desirable. But we must call a spade a spade. Or it's not quite a spade, let's call it 'frustrating' and 'harmful' if we don't have the right words to describe it.

In the end, we can all agree that something is clearly wrong in the holy land, and we are all responsible for what has happened in the past and for what will happen in the future. We are all complicit parties to this conflict, until it is resolved. No one -- neither Israelis nor Palestinians nor aid workers nor tourists nor Druze, etc. -- feels secure, and everyone deserves that right.

I believe it is possible to achieve a satisfying, secure outcome for all parties, and that the first step is to watch our language and listen to each others' stories. But as long as the vernacular of the visionless presides, there will be neither peace nor justice in the Holy Land.

To Katy (and others reading this), this is not meant to be a personal attack, and I do apologize if it feels that way. If you're reading this, I'm interested in hearing back from you. You can post a comment or email me at smthgrlo@gmail.com, and I promise to respond respectfully and promptly.

[the profane in the holy land]

I've spent the last few weeks trying to gain a better understanding of what daily life in Palestine is like. From everything I've read thus far, it seems to me that the Palestinian experience and identity is shaped not only by a shared narrative and intense collective memory, but also by interactions with the 'Other'. In this way, Palestinians define themselves, but Israel, or opposition to Israel, also defines Palestine.

Israel claims a monopoly on legitimacy, politics, resources, morality, and international support. I recently stumbled upon an article with an accompanying video that I'd like to share: http://ht.ly/5eyth ("Israeli police wrestle US citizen to ground, put knee on his neck," from electronicintifada.net).

The video includes 19 year-old Lucas Koerner's explanation for his presence at the rally, and shows footage of at least three Israeli police roughly pushing Koerner to the ground and pinning him down beneath their knees as they handcuff and carry him to their vehicle.

(Lucas Koerner, from electronicintifada's article)

From what I can tell, the young man (American-Jewish) was being a nonviolent presence and standing in solidarity with the Palestinians at an Israeli settler rally on Jerusalem Day earlier this month. He had affixed a Palestinian flag to his kippah and another to his keffiyeh. The video showed the clear transition from surprise to confusion to anger at this seeming clash of symbols. As the young man stated on his blog,

"For them, Judaism and its physical symbol, the kippah, were inseparably bound up with the particular strain of ethno-religious nationalism associated with the state of Israel. It simply never occurred to them that a Jewish person would, in the name of Jewish ethics, stand in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom. I feel that it was precisely this cognitive dissonance on a societal level that formed the motivation for my arrest."

I am interested in identity formation at the societal/communal level and how such an identity can aggravate conflict or set the stage for peace. Koerner mentions the conflation between national and religious symbols in mainstream Israeli identity. Israel is guilty of portraying Palestinians as hopelessly fused with Islam, fundamentalism, and terrorism. And it's not alone.

Not all Jews are Israelis, and not all Israelis are Jewish. Not all Palestinians are Muslim, and not all Muslims are Palestinian. It may sound ridiculous to state such obvious facts, but the way that we characterize, conceptualize, and use our language to frame a situation have great impact on how we perceive the participants, behavior, and possible solutions.

It's not about anti-Semitism. It's not about Arab terrorism. It's not as simple as Israelis versus Palestinians. Those categories are so much bigger and more complex than a single person, a community, a religion, or a state.

Next: Hamas and Fatah meet in Cairo.