As we are starting to experience in the United States, occupation is, among so many other things, divisive. The entire point of an occupation is, in some sense, to divide. Dividing one group of people from another, dividing land, dividing power. And over time, occupation further divides groups, both the occupier and occupied – for/against, collaborator/protester. But with disengagement, I have been experiencing something new, something I never expected to feel. Internal division between anger and sympathy.
(I realize that my posts of late have not been as fact-based or event-based as others, but Andrew does such a good job of that, I have been inclined to try to take a few steps back).
Since my “awakening” to the realities in Israel and Palestine in 1997, I have spent much of my time reading about, writing and speaking out about and working against the occupation. And as I have written elsewhere, partly this was because of my outrage at the oppression the Palestinians were experiencing because, in essence, no group of people should be experiencing what the Palestinians have for the past 38 years. But more, I was outraged that Israel, that the Jewish people, were the ones doing the oppressing. And oppression is something that I could envision being done/had been taught in Hebrew school could be done by just about any group of people other than Israel and the Jewish people.
And the fact that it was Jewish people, even if not “the Jewish people,” doing this, well, it made me angry.
But I have never really admitted to myself until the last few days that I was angry, or certainly seemed angry. Rather, I explained it as evidence of “passion for Judaism” or “urgency for the Jewish people” or “outrage at injustice.” Yet as I read article after article about the settlers — listening to the pleas and vitriol of the extremists, as well as the calm resignation of the less extreme who say (now, at least) they just want to stay in the homes they and their families have built for over a generation — I am finally admitting to myself that, really, I am angry. And that I think many of the people on the anti-occupation left are angry, or at least sound angry (yes, self-righteousness sounds angry), and that this anger, whether real or perceived, or some of both, could perhaps lie at the core of why we have been, frankly, unsuccessful at building movements and/or directing change.
Because, while I am angry at the occupation and the settlements that have been (and will continue to be in the West Bank) the occupation’s core, I am finding that doesn’t address all of my emotions around disengagement. The pleas of the settlers are getting to me in some way. To the point where I admit that I am leery to read or hear more because I simply can’t be sure of how I will react. I want to be steadfast, resolute. But being steadfast and resolute is precisely what I cannot be, yet neither should I be blinding myself.
This got me to thinking about what it is about the occupation and the settlements that has made me so angry. I trace it back to a meeting during my summer living in Ramallah in1997, when my members of my program had the chance to meet with a few members of the city council of Ma’aleh Adumim, the largest settlement in the territories. All of the settlers we met with were Americans, who spoke about how displaced they felt as Jews in the United States, how they felt as if they never quite fit in, even though they had been born and bred there. And how different, how completed they felt in Israel. And in Ma’aleh Adumim specifically because, in addition to the amenities it provided (close commute to Jerusalem, green lawns, beautiful pools, their own Little League), they felt they were fulfilling a deeper commitment to Israel and the Jewish people by being on this specific land.
Understandable, I thought. Not my experience, but understandable. After all, who wouldn’t want to live and feel all of those things, especially when they come with tax breaks (never mind why you would create a Little League, the essence of the land where you felt so unwelcome)?
But then I had the chance to ask them about their feelings toward the Jahalin Bedouin “living” within view. Not next door, but within sight of the settlement’s outskirts. That summer, the Jahalin became the center of a fierce legal battle over land rights, and many were “living” in Israeli government-provided shipping containers, the ones you see piled high at ports or big factories. They, including their children, were also “living” next to the Jerusalem city dump. (The Jahalin have been a longtime campaign of Rabbis for Human Rights, which has written a brief summary of the issue at http://www.rhr.israel.net/pdf/thejahalin.pdf.
When I asked the Ma’aleh Adumim residents about their feelings toward the Jahalin, they neither defended the government’s actions, nor did they express any level of sympathy with the Jahalin’s plight.
They told me they didn’t know what I was talking about. They simply didn’t see the Jahalin at all. Whether they refused to see, or refused to admit they saw, doesn’t matter. They told me they simply didn’t see.
And from that moment on, I have been angry.
And in the subsequent 8 years, my anger at those in Ma’aleh Adumim who refused to see the Jahalin has simply been extended to everyone else. The other settlers for being just like those in Ma’aleh Adumim and not seeing what they have been causing around them, not only to Palestinians but to the young Israelis conscripted to defend the settlements. The Israeli public for not seeing and/or not moving beyond sight to understanding. The American Jewish community for not seeing the reality on the ground, or at least the ground beyond the steps set out for them by their Birthright tour leader. The American Jewish community’s leadership for seeing to it that things stay that way.
I have been angry at all of these groups for not seeing. Because seeing is not only the essence of Judaism, it is really the essence of humanity. Sight need not lead everyone to the same understanding or conclusions, but without sight, you can’t even make an argument. Sight may be difficult, but blindness is not – or, should not be — a choice people can make, but a malady that only an unfortunate few are forced to suffer.
But I now see that anger has made me, well, blind. There is first the fact that I need to admit that not everyone in the groups I am angry at is the same; some indeed have seen, but just have reached different conclusions than me, which I cannot be angry at, per se.
But the bigger picture is that my anger has been blinding me to the human drama the settlers are experiencing. Anger allows me to see them as simply gamblers who lost, exploiters who have been taking advantage of everyone for over 20 years in order to live on and control land that should not have been theirs to live on, extremists doing harm to Judaism.
Anger allows me to not see the questions the settlers are asking about why they must leave their homes, and simply respond with circular questions about the Palestinians whose homes have been destroyed. Anger allows me to not see the questions about democracy being posed by settlers, about why Sharon did not put disengagement to a referendum, and simply say that democracy has never been extended to the Palestinians. Anger allows me to see – and support — Jewish soldiers who say they are “just following orders.”
As I pondered in an earlier post, blindness, like an agenda, makes me just like a settler.
Those of us who work against the Occupation cannot blind ourselves to what is happening this week. Regardless of its causes, or its necessity, or its ultimate justice, disengagement is another in a line of human tragedies in Israel and Palestine. And if we really want it all to end some day, we (well, at least I) must do a lot more to make sure we really see and understand all of what is happening — not just the part of it we agree with.
Seeing and not seeing
The Jewish settlers in Gaza have indeed been betrayed by their government and a good case can be made for the fact that they have been pawns from the very start in the ill-conceived policies of a succession of governments. But it sure is hard not to be angry at them: like the Maale Adumim settlers who could not see the Jahalin, the Jews in Gaza could not see past their swimming pools, mansions and messianic zeal to the terrible poverty of their Gazan neighbors. Robi Damelin, an Israeli woman on a speaking tour of the US from The Bereaved Parents Circle, said in a talk last fall that when she went to Gaza for the first time (to visit a Palestinian family whose son had just been killed), she was shocked at the ostentatious wealth of the Jewish homes, right next to the really dire poverty of the Palestinians. “At least, we could have been better neighbors to them,” she said.
I find it very hard not to be angry; for me, a goal is to figure out how to sustain my anger while still trying to “see” and understand the implications of these tragic events with unclouded lenses.
Steffi, I appreciate your
Steffi, I appreciate your statement of the goal — sustaining anger but seeing and understanding the tragedy. So much of the discussion, debate, reporting, thought on these issues is either/or. That is, you are either angry at the settlements and settlers, or you are sympathetic; just like you are supposed to be either angry at the Palestinians, or sympathetic. The opportunity to be both is limited, as it’s complex and hard to organize around. That’s one of the great things about this site and others like it — sharing a space in which we can be both angry and sympathetic.
seeing
Wow. Once in awhile I experience gooseflesh which is a true sign to me that I am hearing or reading something true. I am shivering. When I was young I volunteered at Lighthouse (for the Blind) reading books and filing, whatever. What I learned from the job is that there is no vision as sharp as the vision refined by the blind. While I read your contribution, I kept my eyes shut. I hope I get to meet you some day, but in the meantime, thank you.
An Anti-Settlement Settler
Great writing as always, Brad.
In terms of humanizing the settlers - there’s an interesting post on Tikun Olam from a man who resides in a West Bank settlement but opposes the settlement movement. Evidently he was part of a youth group that went to settle Kfar Etzion after the 1967 War.
He goes on to write:
Is there a distinction to be made between the older settlements that arose in the wake of the 1967 war and those that were established more recently, fueled by Messianic fervor to reclaim Judaea and Samaria?
If the writer’s sentiment is widespread, there might be less resistance to dismantling some of the West Bank settlements than there was in Gaza. At any rate, it is interesting to hear a settler grappling with the moral consequences of the settlement movement in an honest way.
Andrew Schamess
complex feelings
It is, I think, both a mark and a burden of maturity to feel angry and sympathetic; angry and sad; relieved and burdened; simultaneously/ sequentially. I am upset/sad to see people uprooted from homes some of them have lived in for 38 years. I can imagine how wrenching that kind of dislocation is and how I would feel if I were forced to leave a home I lived in and loved. I am furious that the Israeli government allowed/condoned/encouraged the building of those homes in land that was not and never shold have been part of the State of Israel. I am relieved to see the settlements dismantled but simultaneously I am burdened by the thought of how the lives of the displaced settlers will change and the bitterness they will carry into the next round of Israeli elections. As best I can tell there is no way of “resolving” these conflictual feelings; there is only the capacity to bear them, to think about them and to communicate them. Nonetheless, in the last analyis, for the sake of the Palestinians and for our own sake as Jews, justice must prevail. And as far as I can tell, justice means leaving Gaza now and dismantling the settlements on the West Bank sooner rather than later. The pain, anger, suffering, grief and pride that accompanies just actions is better expressed than ignored; somewhat easier to tolerate when it is spoken. But nonetheless, awful and wonderful to live with.