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Easter letter from
3. APRIL -
The city of sin
Tel Aviv For it is really amazing how fast these very different immigrants adopt "Israeli values" without necessarily giving up the values of their homelands…. When you consider how bad we Danes are in giving our own immigrants "Danish values".
I especially love the tolerance in this "city of sin", Tel Aviv, where young people drink, smoke, play, love and whore all night long all over, on streets and beaches. Here in the world capital of homosexuality, gay marriages (as Israel all over, also in the army) have been legal and accepted for years. Imagine if we in the twice as populated Copenhagen, could present an equal tolerance as in this city where 100.000 every year get together for the Gay Pride Parade, or imagine how we (not least Søren Espersen) would react if we had our dinner-conversations interrupted for ten minutes, every time the Minaret, right above the kosher restaurant, several times a day, call to prayer with a ear deafening volume, as I saw and heard it today. Yes in open-mindedness and tolerance, we closed Danes, and the rest of the world could learn a lot from Israel’s multi cultural paradise, which absolutely is worth a visit.
If you don’t wish
to support Israel’s politic of oppression financially you can
just do as I do, move in with a poor Palestinian family on the
West bank and then hitchhike or drive around during the day and
use the Israeli hospitality to discuss with them. For it really
shouldn’t be all that difficult to find common humanity in them
for us Danes, who in the name of open-mindedness often are just
as effective oppressors, should it? J
Yet even
though that I feel like a fish in water among all these for me so
familiar Jewish faces, from whose strong social commitment I have made a
living all my life in USA, (here mixed with some hard types I do not
know from USA) I cannot avoid the feeling that the Jewishness I love
perhaps thrives best in the Diaspora.
Furthermore in a society
where they suddenly themselves have become the oppressors thereby
loosing the psychological observation of and empathy with outer society
which is so important for the oppressed in order to survive.
Late I forget how I once for hours was standing and hitchhiked in vain one night in icy sleet rain on a bridge in New Jersey when suddenly such a Hassidic family picked me up and took me home in Brooklyn, where they gave me hot baths and loving care in my miserable state. I stayed with them for several days and since I had just come up from the warm southern I had thrown away all the warm clothes which people in the North frequently gave me as a penniless vagabond.
But since it didn’t make sense now to travel around in
the winter cold up North, this family dug out everything they had of
used clothes for me. And unavoidably that was their traditional black
Hassidic clothing. So for months I hitchhiked around and looked like a
Hassidic Jew in a couple of enormous black trousers, their obligatory
black hat, long black coat and white shirts - with my braided beard as
worthy replacement for the hair locks.
So if I had not had obligations on the West Bank I
probably would have ended up at home with a new loving family - and have
gotten me a new set of Hassidic clothing in which I tomorrow could
travel around among the – I have to confess – far more open and
hospitable Palestinians. But the value of hospitality is actually more
fun where you least expect it and have to work a bit on it first - go
through hell in order to go to heaven - as I always express it.
This surreal sense of security is really overwhelming for me when I think of how many years it is since I last picked up a female hitchhiker in the U.S., where women have long ago “lost the night” - as well as their freedom during the day. Oddly enough, it reminds me mostly of another occupation-type freedom when I drove around in 1983 in Northern Ireland at the time they bombed each other to pieces - but here with names like "Catholics" and "Protestants" as their mutual demonizing titles. It was a time when Belfast was divided in an equally insane way by walls with barbed wire and checkpoints. Nevertheless, I constantly filled up my car with hitchhiking women - many in high-heeled shoes and golden earrings. One day I actually had 12 in my VW van at the same time - mostly women.
When I in my lectures in the U.S. often get the question
from women if they could travel around as I me, I always reply, "Yes,
maybe, but start by hitchhiking around in safe Catholic countries such
as Ireland and Poland ( where I also in Communist times picked up women
anywhere from 7 to 70 year-old). Once you have gained enough confidence
to men you might with some non- violent communication handle this in the
violent / sexist United States." But I always forget Israel's
enlightening example of trust - a trust which no doubt was promoted in
the 2nd Intifada time when no doubt felt safer to
hitchhike than to sit on a bus.
Only at the end of the darkness, Not until night did someone finally help me to find a place right near the border with Lebanon, where from the roof I could see straight into the Hezbollah villages. In this incredible beauty and peace up here I could not grasp that they had been at war with them as late as 2006. But this is how with a little effort you can find (free) accommodation and beauty Israel.
10. april
- Lecturing for women in Israel's universities
As I walked into the auditorium, it appeared to be filled
with mostly Jewish women, two of them Arab/Drouse. Here I felt at
home, for it was the first time on the trip I was facing Jews who in
every aspect reminded me of all the Jews I am always surrounded by in
the United States, immensely socially involved and aware, extremely
liberal/leftist in their attitudes toward Palestine and even their
facial features reminded me of the many Jewish girlfriends in my youth.
So my lectures were enormously popular and they were deeply frustrated
that only an hour had been set off for it. They insisted on getting it
all another day, but it was the last day before the Jewish Passover, so
it could not be organized.
Afterwards the curator in Israel's largest photo
museum asked for a meeting with me …even though I had warned her
that photograph doesn’t interest me much. :-)
It was a wonderful evening with Tal and her
girlfriend Michal on top of a house on the hillside of Haifa
overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. They were touching me by
being deeply in love with each other and when Tal in my lecture
had taken note of me being "closet lesbian” we almost ended up
in a one big pile …..a little fun with these journeys of
contrast since I the next evening ended up sharing a mattress
and blanket with a very much occupied Arab man in Hebron (see
later). Since I began to integrate myself with American lesbians
in the 1980s, I have always thought that it is much more
uncomplicated to be with lesbians than with heterosexual women
.... with all the problems the latter constantly give rise to.
:-)
After morning coffee in the hot sun on the veranda with a wonderful view of the ocean in this beautiful city of Haifa I departed. One of my reasons for wanting to see Haifa was also to see the Bahai' gardens and the mausoleum of the founder of the religion I feel closest to, Bahai. With its integrating philosophy of marrying across all religions and races, I have always been able to quickly identify my Baha'i students in U.S. universities; for they are the only ones who always unconditionally understand EVERYTHING I say :-)
It was an incredible experience in the morning to gather around this goal here at Jesus' Birthplace morning (contrary to people today Jesus’ parents could move freely from Nazareth to Bethlehem) with hundreds of others from around the world. Of these 37 % were women with enthusiastic participation from head covered Palestinian women.
I took myself lethargically good time to take
many pictures along the route, but my favorite shot was this
head covered woman with a V-sign in front of the wall
inscription “Love wins”. Why can’t our Muslim women at home in
Denmark figure out how to take more part in sports when you see
how eagerly these freedom-loving women do this down here? One of
them I ran along with for long stretches with time to talk, "How
old are you?" I said. "17 years, but I also ran last year," she
replied. "Wow, then you're exactly 50 years younger than me."
Still, we ended up being a good mutually supportive company, one
of today's great experiences.
There was just the small problem that although we are only 8 km from Jerusalem I would even in my donkey riding mode "run into the wall" – the reason we on the limited areas the Palestinians have left had to run the same route multiple times.
I'm so definitely more inclined every year to run
through walls in the Berlin marathon than to run into and along
walls everywhere like here. Just as I would prefer to run in
Israel's Berlin like flat fertile areas rather than in those
mountains and piles of stones, they have left the Palestinians.
I ended up, of course, like many others walking or almost
crawling up the steepest hills, but the legs of course also hurt
by running downhill. Why put your life at risk for peace?
For me, this is about peace. In my youth I stood in numerous locations in the United States along with John Kerry and demonstrated for peace (in the US- occupied Vietnam). As foreign minister now his peace talks between Israel and Palestine expires on my 67th birthday April 29th. And I wish no birthday gift more than a peace agreement (naively perhaps, but who knows if they've got some secret agreement we haven’t yet heard of). Yet the world forgets us quickly over here on the West Bank if we do not constantly demonstrate ..... for the right to be human.
13. april - IS IT OK TO HATE, SOMETIMES? After running the five hour Palestine Marathon, I last night held a five hour marathon lecture in "The Danish House in Palestine" followed by discussions in Ramallah's many bars. I was very happy to see so many Danish "NGO's" who had challenged the many Israeli obstacles and walls to come from as far as Hebron and Bethlehem, to a completely full house.
However, it was also disturbing to hear these liberal and idealistic
young people, with many different ways of expression, confide to me,
that my lecture had given them severe doubts, with all my talk about
"how we ought to integrate with what we picture as our enemies",
because, as they said "Don't you realize that down here it is completely
acceptable to hate the Israelis, how can we not, with everything we see
that they do to the Palestinians, every day. Therefore, you really make
us feel guilty, because we, at the same time really, really wish to be
open and tolerant." With the help of an American-Jewish family, we managed to get a tour of the Parliament, and one cannot help but admire the completely transparent democracy the Israelis have created, with free access for all (even us foreigners) to sit around the oval tables in all the committee rooms as well as in the actual plenum just as everything is transmitted on TV. And still, the question keeps popping up HOW the government, with all this openness, is still capable of hiding for the Israelis (and most of the world) the brutal oppression this democracy performs, only a few kilometers away?The
Holocaust Museum is even more beautiful, overwhelming and shocking than
Lieberman's parallel museum in Berlin. Still my highly educated Danish
friend, several times mentioned that she wished she had seen this museum
in Germany and not here, because in one way or another "I feel much of
it rubs off on me because of the anger I feel towards the Israelis."
This, to me, is a shocking reaction, that in identifying with one
group’s suffering you are unable to feel empathy for the pain and
suffering of the other group, especially when the two of them to such a
high degree are connected. As I pointed out in my lecture of how we in
one moment can be the oppressed and the next moment
be the oppressor. But I also felt that this to a certain degree
was my own reaction, although I had experienced the oppression of the
Palestinians much shorter than this woman.
It really demands an enormous human surplus to see and to "process" this unbelievable holocaust exhibition and I don't know if it was the tiredness of us both that made many of the pictures flicker. But the worst of all was that you constantly got flash backs to the similar scenes from the West bank, in all these "Nazi" soldiers with weapons in front of groups of unarmed people, all the watchtowers and barbed wire fences, all the endless controls of powerless people with walls and gates, all the calculated ethnic cleansing, all the "übermench" arrogance towards people, who feel more and more like "untermench" (non human) etc. And then you still breathe a sigh of relief when reminding yourself that all these apparent similarities , at least do not have the same deadly outcome here, because the oppression today is carried out by a democracy (which unfortunately did not prevent USA and France from murdering four million Vietnamese and one million Algerians). I have so often, in my workshops in USA, overheard fights between African Americans and Jews, about which was the worst, Slavery or Holocaust, racism or anti-Semitism, but always stopped their arguments with remarks like "never compare oppression that way, because for the suffering person, his pain is always the worst and often makes him blind to other peoples pain". This is an explanation, but not an excuse for the Israelis and Palestinians failing attempts to show empathy for the pain of the counterpart.
Professor Dajani, who himself as an angry young man was banned from Israel for 25 years for his activities in Fatah, tries today to break the culture of denial on both sides, by creating reconciliation through empathy in the young people. He is my hero and one of the small hopes I have experienced on my trip, because according to the Danish NGO' and (Jewish-American) columnist Friedman, his attitude is winning more and more acceptance among the young Palestinians. Read more about him in Israel’s left oriented paper, Haaretz NO, IT IS NEVER OK TO HATE WHEN - AS THIS PALESTINIAN PROFESSOR SHOWS IT - WE CAN OVERCOME OUR ANGER AND PAIN THROUGH THE EMPATHY WITH THE PAIN OF OUR ENEMY.
The only part I wrote in English on Facebook. But now I also want to tell my Israeli and American friends what I saw on this trip of the oppression in Israel. Actually nothing new which you haven’t already heard about - unless you live in total self-denial – in the same way I saw all too many Americans do it during the Vietnam War. This is actually not a bad comparison since both these oppressions were carried out in the name of democracy. This gives us hope – unlike a situation in which Palestinians had been oppressed by a totalitarian government – in which case I would not have bothered writing these words.
Yes, I had read about it all beforehand and still
it is shocking to stand day after day in long lines with
Palestinians in order to cross the inhuman 700 km long apartheid
wall (although the actual Green Line between Israel and
Palestine is only some 250 km long). Not to speak of the endless
harassment when going through Israeli checkpoints all over the
land of actual Palestine. In the checkpoint going into Bethlehem
my Danish friends who organized the Palestine Marathon again and
again had their flyers and equipment for the marathon
confiscated – their only crime being that they were helping the
Palestinians to set up some successful enterprises. Without
helping to create some livelihood and tourism for them now, when
you are stealing their land and water recourses, destroying
their olive groves etc., you Israelis will eventually have to
feed the powerless ghetto you have created.
I moved into a house which the Danish Marathon organizers had rented in solidarity with the owner. He had lost all his income when Israelis built the wall on 3 sides of his house thus cutting him off from his auto workshop. Although he lived far from the Green Line they built the wall that way to give Jews access to Rachel’s tomb. That way they cut off both Muslims and Christians from coming there although Rachel is cultivated as much by them. When I tried to photograph our joint breakfast in the owner’s kitchen, the owner immediately stopped me: "No, you must not. If anybody takes a picture of the soaring guard tower seen through my kitchen windows only a few meters away, I will be imprisoned." The Israelis are trying to force him away in order to move the wall further into Palestinian land just because of that tomb. So I urge all visitors in Bethlehem to stay with this loving family in order to help it out. I will send address to travelers going there.
In his house I did a mistake one day sitting in the afternoon writing Facebook updates – the biggest crime of all, I think, when I ought to be out doing active solidarity work. For the women in the house had asked me if I wanted to go with them out to work on the marathon route where it went through a refugee camp a couple of blocks away. I really regretted that I didn’t go, for while they worked in the camp suddenly the Israelis attacked them shooting with some live ammo, but mostly teargas. During the whole attack which lasted for hours they were trapped inside the house of a family crying from the tear gas. I asked a Danish photographer friend why she took no pictures. "Are you crazy? I did not want to risk my life. I have never been so scared before." But the local Palestinians took it calmly saying: "This is how they have shot at us ever since the wall came up trying to force us out. But we are not giving in." No wonder the small boys constantly tried to burn down the guard tower where they partly were shooting from – the tower she photographed me running by flashing a V-sign during the marathon next day. Two elderly American women from my house came back totally shocked after the attack they had just witnessed. "This is the worst and most dangerous moment I have ever witnessed." And that says something, for they were older than me and had been freedom riders in the civil rights movement in the American south where they also had experienced quite a bit of violence against people struggling against apartheid.
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_________________________________ In Denmark the extreme rightwing politicians resist calling this an "apartheid wall". Perhaps they would have a point if it had only run along the green line and was set up to defend Israelis against Palestinian suicide bombers. Of course, I too found it amazing that I could now get on Israeli busses safely without anybody paying attention to my big suitcase. But indeed it is an apartheid wall, for most of it is not made to protect freedom loving peaceful Israelis, but oppressive settlers on the West bank. I came here to support "The right to movement" and of course I support the right of Israelis to move to the West Bank just as well as the Palestinian right to move to Israel prober. But if that right only goes in one direction and if immigrants don’t want to integrate with those they settle among, but on the contrary come with an übermensch ideology about them as some kind of untermensch, fencing inside themselves just as white south Africans did it from the blacks, then we are talking about apartheid – pure and simple.
These fortified islands I saw everywhere in the occupied territories, but never as offensive as in Hebron – a town the Israelis absolutely have smashed the economy in. Especially in the old downtown area they have literally closed all Palestinian business just to let a handful of fanatic settlers live close to Abraham’s grave.
Mostly this sinister area reminded me of the deserted parts of Berlin when the Communists had closed off all streets close to the wall. Here I managed to get through the checkpoints and photograph the soldiers of oppression running after imagined ghosts in this virtual ghost city. Within it I saw unhealthy looking Hasidic children growing up in kindergartens of hate – themselves in a virtual prison – and wondered why Jews in the name of ideology are capable of oppressing their own children to such a degree.
Within this occupied area I met one Arab family whom they had not yet succeeded in forcing out though their policy of ethnic cleansing and endless hateful harassments. I felt Jamil deserved all my help and decided to move in with him in his desperation. 33 years old he could not get married, for no woman wanted to or could get permission to move in with him. And he could not himself afford to move since he was not permitted to sell his house which had been in his family possession for generations. His mother lay sick in an adjoining apartment. The only place I could buy supper for him was in a restaurant for the soldiers and settlers, but he was not allowed inside. While I ordered the food he had to stand outside looking in though the windows which gave me flashbacks to the worst apartheid I had experienced in the American South (that was, however, years ago, not in modern enlightened times). From his roof top we could see the much larger Jewish fortified settlements on the hills of this enormous depressing city.
Jamil had 3 rooms with no furniture, since the Israelis did not allow him to carry furniture through the checkpoints – in their constant attempt to force him out. So he invited me to share his madras on the floor and his blanket – the most moving hospitality I have been subject to for ages. Except that there was nothing to do after 6 pm. He sat for long telling me about his frustration which seemed close to suicidal depression and showed me in the newspapers how the Israelis daily took over more and more land like this. Like most Palestinians I met, he said, "I don’t carry anymore. They can have it all. If only they will let me live and not starve."
At 8pm he went to sleep as usual with nothing else to do – 4 hours before my usual bed time. I couldn’t sleep that early – especially not in the noise of the laughing and drinking soldiers underneath our window. So I took a sleeping pill in an attempt to escape from this nightmare as fast as possible, but then a real nightmare started in which I had flashbacks to "Schindler’s list" of Nazi soldiers storming up the staircases in the very similar Krakow ghetto mixed with the scenes of the thousands of all-night-drinking, uncaring hedonistic Israeli youngsters I had seen in Tel Aviv and elsewhere.
Next day I departed from Jamil after giving him
the equivalent of the cost of staying in an Israeli hotel. When
I tried to find my way out of this horror city without street
names I made a wrong turn and ended up going on highway 35
almost all the way to the Israeli border crossing Tarqumia. I
turned off in Idna to ask for directions. If I had come exactly
there a couple of days later this story from Idna could easily
have been my own destiny since I too drove on Israeli license
plates:
I am not so much surprised about the desperation
and anger which goes behind such senseless attacks. I am more
surprised that there was any strength left to carry it out with
all the broken, crushed souls I sensed in the Hebron area. But if on a conscious level you really chose to become oppressors, why don’t you at least become intelligent oppressors by using much of the great Jewish psychological thinking developed in the years you were yourselves oppressed? As I asked in my lectures in your universities, why don’t you use Marshall Rosenberg’s non-violent communication instead of inflaming violence wherever you go among your oppressed? I know most of you wonderful young people don’t want to serve as occupying soldiers, but when you do it nevertheless, have you really been programmed into being so insulting and arrogant to the Palestinians (and even to us foreign solidarity workers) as I saw you behaving everywhere? How can the nice innocent college kids I experienced be turned into such powerful monsters with guns? Just a smile from you or a helpful attitude would reduce so much of the irritation and anger you constantly create in us on the other side of the barrel of the gun.
I have tried here to see the humanity on both
sides. Much of the world wants to boycott Israel. I say that we
should still travel among you and enjoy your hospitality, but
put our money in Palestinian hotels to give the oppressed a bit
of support. For without a constant dialogue there is only
apartheid and hate left. These words in English I am especially
directing to the many thoughtful Israelis I met on the trip.
Thank you so much for letting me into your lives. You will
always be welcome in my home – as will the Palestinian marathon
runners I will soon be hosting in Copenhagen. I do have walls
between my guest rooms – but I will make sure to break them down
if you end up there at the same time :-) Som afsluttende kommentar til min Israel/Palæstina rejse vil jeg gerne fortælle om den største oplevelse dernede. Nemlig privilegiet at få lov til at bo sammen med de tre danske kvinder, som har organiseret hele Palæstina Marathon. Signe Fischer Schmidt, Lærke Hein og Lise Ring. Aldrig har jeg set nogen arbejde så hårdt og idealistisk på at få et projekt med så fællesmenneskelige værdier op at stå møde så megen modstand.
Maratonløb føles aldeles ikke befriende mens man
gennemfører det, men aldrig i mine 12 maratonløb har jeg følt
mig så bogstaveligt løftet som her op og ned af Palæstinas
håbløse bakkedale og fået sådan et skud livsglæde som ved at
deltage i den befrielsesproces som disse tre fantastiske kvinder
har sat i gang ……midt i undertrykkelsens mørke på Vestbredden.
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The teacher introducing me
