Here it is: the 40th anniversary of the 1967 War, of the Occupation, of so much changing in Israel, Palestine, the Middle East, the world. Overwhelming, actually. And to be here, to drive to the Dead Sea and see the sprawling insanity of the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement, to get a bit closer to the Wall, to feel again so distant from what is so close, well, it is hard to do much but shake your head and feel overwhelmed at the permanent feeling of it all, at the difficulty of believing this will, or can, ever really “end.”
(For what it’s worth, of the newspaper articles I have read in the past few days, I would recommend most highly Akiva Eldar’s piece “Living the Lives of Others” in Monday’s Ha’aretz.)
But as I was reflecting on the Eldar piece, on what Israel and Palestine might have been had 1966 not led to 1967, I came upon another article, a smaller article, if you will. About a very important issue to those it impacts but one that probably doesn’t even make the Top 1,000 in issues in Israel and Palestine these days.
The article is about the fact that only one of Israel’s banks will set up shop in the Bedouin town of Rahat, in southern Israel. Despite the fact that 40,000 people live in the town, and 10,000 more in the surrounding area, only Mercantile-Discount has opened a branch. The other major banks have been asked to open there as well, but have either said the residents should go to the closest town that has one (upwards of 35km away) or use the Internet (which most people in the town either don’t have the equipment to access, or the understanding of what to do when they get on).
Economic disparity, big business leaving out second class citizens, avoiding poor areas — this is nothing new. But the saddest part of this story to me is actually not mentioned in the article. That is, the Bedouin didn’t just end up here, poor and bank-less in Rahat. The Israeli government forced the Bedouin to live in these towns in the first place. Starting in the 1970s, following a policy of simply not “recognizing” their villages as even existing and thus not providing services of any kind – even a mailing address, which is hard to conceive of as being a service provided by the state, but it is — the State of Israel decided to create seven concentration towns. In these towns, the State imagined the Bedouin population could simply give up their culture and livelihood and undergo some level of Israel-ification.
(Unrecognized villages is a fascinating and difficult topic – you can get some background here and here, as well as read about Adalah’s many efforts to fight this policy in court here)
Needless to say, Israel-ification has been a painful and difficult process for the Bedouin. They lag behind just about every other group in Israeli society, in just about every social and development category. And clearly banks and other businesses know this. Even the Eged bus company, which controls public transportation throughout the country, has an essentially overt policy of discriminating against the Bedouin (and Israeli Arabs, as a whole). Whereas buses run frequently into and throughout neighboring towns (not to mention settlements in the West Bank), they either avoid Bedouin towns altogether, or when they do go to these towns, they stop only at one point on the outskirts of town, and only once or twice throughout the day. Despite the insistence of overwhelming majorities of people in these towns that they would use – that they need — banking and bus services, the companies stay away.
(For some comparison to the plight of the Bedouins in Rahat, you can read a fascinating/disturbing piece by a settler concerned about decreasing service to his settlement and how it indicates signs of the “next expulsion” here.)
So there’s the cruel irony – the State forces the Bedouin to leave their traditional lives in order to have them live in towns the State will “recognize.” Then, although they get an address and running water and electricity, the State still does not insure that the now-recognized towns will have services anywhere commensurate with other Israelis, either in Israel or the West Bank.
Separate. Unequal. Perhaps the Bedouin and Israeli Arabs are not subject to the conditions and oppression of The Occupation, but strikes me that this is occupation of another kind.
All this got me thinking about, well, home. And how similar these services and inequality issues are to issues in my real home of DC. As with Bedouin banking, these are also not issues that any of the presidential candidates will be debating any time soon, that even make the Top 10,000 issues in the U.S. today.
But consider that, in all of Ward 7 of DC, home to over 70,000 people, there is only one sit-down, full-service restaurant. One: Denny’s. Every other place to eat is counter or take-out service. Ward 7 may be distant and neglected in the capital city, a place where few tourists ever go, but it is insane to me that there is only one restaurant. Surely other restaurants would have business if they opened.
And then there is the long-standing issue of the lack of grocery stores in Ward 8, across the river and also home to 70,000 people. The last one closed in 1998; a Giant is slated to open in October 2007, years after the residents were promised they would have a new one. But still – just 1 for 70,000 residents, spread over an entire ward? Is that at all sufficient, let alone equal?
Thinking about the Bedouin banking and busing issues while listening to the news recount the history of 1967, of the conditions of the Occupation felt a bit like reading these stories about conditions in Wards 7 and 8 in DC while thinking about when the U.S. occupation and war in Iraq will end.
So here’s my thought. And again, nothing altogether new – issues of social activism and consciousness, like socially responsible investing and consumer boycotts, have been around for awhile, and there are tons of resources out there to help guide you. But they’re still limited in their reach, and knowledge that these issues even exist is also so limited. How many anti-Occupation activists, let alone the general public, are aware of Bedouin or Israeli Arab issues?
Maybe what we need to do to expand their reach is label all of these social problems “occupations.” (Small “o,” though – there is still only one “Occupation” with a capital “O.”) Perhaps there is not an army or another state occupying Rahat or the poorer areas of DC, but what is occupying them is lack of general awareness, neglect, inequality, separation. And these should be as much on our minds as the major O/occupations of our time, because they can be solved.
No matter how many blog entries we write, how much money we give to activist groups, how many or how loud our protests, the Separation Wall cannot come down tomorrow. Settlements like Ma’aleh Adumim cannot be evacuated and disengaged from without unimaginable effort and cost. Similarly, the troops cannot leave Iraq tomorrow without similar cost (both financial and human).
So when things like the Occupation of Palestine or Iraq seem so overwhelming, perhaps all of these issues need to be labeled occupations. Not just from a “what can I do” perspective, but also a policy perspective, as well. If legislators and executive branches and businesses understand that inequality and neglect and discrimination are occupations in their own right, as well, then perhaps they can be convinced to act, to change. Yesterday, following this article, I drove a bit out of my way to go to a Bank Discount ATM, as a bit of a reward for their being in Rahat. I plan to let them know I did this, to thank them – and to let the other banks know I plan to avoid their services as much as possible. I hope to continue this practice more when I get home – going to Giant over Safeway.
And one by one, we can end some of these occupations. And as these “smaller” (I use this term lightly and in the framework of national contexts – for the people in Wards 7 and 8 and in Rahat, their lack of services are likely much “larger” than conditions in Nablus or Baghdad) occupations end, perhaps their approach to the larger Occupations can change, too.
Sound naïve again? Probably. But, as always, I have to ask whether the current approach is any less so. Is it more naïve to think that we can convince the Israeli and US governments to end their Occupations (and support of each other’s) by simply demanding they end than to try to convince them to change perspective by making them see what other, more local occupations look like? Then hoping that those realizations can make them see what the larger Occupations really mean. And why they are so destructive, not just of the occupied, but also of the occupier. Just saying it won’t end anything, and we can’t end the Occupations through protests alone. We have to demonstrate and prove to them what it really means.
When I first read Tom Friedman’s recent article about his belief in the graduating class of college students and their ability to change things, I scoffed a bit. The new generation seems so shallow, so uninvolved, to so many of us. But, as Friedman says, they are active – just a bit more quietly, a bit more locally. They won’t replicate the 1960s, but then again, the 1960s are over, so maybe that’s okay.
Maybe they understand more than even I have that to end the Occupation, you have to go one occupation at a time.
Dear Brad
What an excellent article! Maybe the “o” could also stand for “oppression”.
Thank you for sharing some information about the plight of the Bedouin.
This past April I posted a five part series on my Blog entitled Bedouin & Brous & Bustan. The first part begins with
“I first met Devorah Brous, an extraordinary person and dedicated committed human rights activist, when I was visiting Santa Fe and attended a weekly meeting of the Santa Fe Tikkun Community. I was so impressed that I invited her to visit Boston and speak to the New England Tikkun Community. After she spoke, my wife, Joan, proposed that we form a sister community with Wadi Na’am, an unrecognized Bedouin village IN ISRAEL (all caps provided to emphasize that the Bedouin live in Israel and are Israeli citizens). Through the sister community project funds were raised to help construct a medical clinic (for which the Israeli government would not authorize a permit) in Wadi Na’am. This year the clinic received an Honorable Mention in Israel’s Most Prestigious Architecture Competition.”
http://judaismandisrael.blogspot.com/2007/04/bedouin-brous-bustan-part-1.html
Part 1 has some history of the Bedouin in Negev from 1948-2004. The next four posts are about our sister community project with Wadi Na’am, an itinerary for a visit (that never happened) and details of Devorah’s recent tour in the US.
While you are in Israel, you might want to contact Devorah and participate in one of her projects and/or take one of her one day visit to the Bedouin Negev (which she may still be giving.). Her US tour ends on June 10. Since I am not sure whether she will be visiting her parents in New Jersey after the tour, I don’t know when she will be back in Israel.
You may already know all this, but do you have any plans or interest in making contact with human rights activists; for example, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Jessica Montel, Jeff Halper? If I can be of any help, please contact me at admin@ronaldwfox.com or you can go through Devorah.
I look forward to reading more about your travels and insights.
Ron
B”H I’ll admit that changes in the bus routes and schedule are the least of my worries. Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, not the Arabs. Settler? K’far Shmaryahu and Ramat Aviv were built on Arab villages. Hevron, for example, was not. As far as the Arabs (& many Europeans) are concerned, we’re all “settlers.”
The various anti-Torah, Israeli regimes have made many mistakes. One of their biggest was not annexing Yehudah, Shomron, & Azza. Another was handing control of the Temple Mount to the Arabs.
See https://users.cs.jmu.edu/abzugcx/public/Biblical-Hebrew/Map-of-Israel-&-the-Arab-World-plus-Iran.bmp
The Arabs already have plenty. There’s just one problem. None of them like the so-called “palestinians.” Jordan kills them, Egypt and Kuwait kicks them out. So, all of a sudden, it’s supposed to be Israel’s problem. Go figure…
The Bedouin? Some of the friendly Israel clans my be entitled to some assistance under Jewish Law, like many loyal Druze, and Lebanese Christians. It’s worth investigation. Any hostile elements should be taken care of in a different manner. And, it should be openly, without any hesitation, embarrassment, nor concern for the feelings nor opinions of the goyim.
Ben Yehudah: I’m a little surprised at the first statement in your comment above: “Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, not the Arabs.” One could,instead, look at this whole conflict as a tragedy ensuing from the fact that both Jews and Palestinians have valid claims to this land and that it contains religious/historical sites that are profoundly meaningful to both groups. One could argue, I suppose, about whose claims to certain particular areas are “more” valid. But to deny the Palestinians any claim to the land they had been living in for centuries when the early Zionists began to settle there seems to be quite a stretch.
I’d like to quote from Amos Oz (from “Tales of Love and Darkness”:
“In the lives of individuals and of peoples, too, the worst conflicts are often those that break out between those who are persecuted…That may well be the case with the hundred-year-old conflict between Arabs and Jews.
“The Europe that abused, humiliated and oppressed the Arabs by means of imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, and oppression is the same Europe that oppressed and persectued the Jews, and eventually allowed or even helped the Germans to root them out of every corner of the continent and murder almost all of them. But when the Arabs look at us, they see not a bunch of half-hysterical survivors but a new offshoot of Europe, with its colonialism, technical sophistication, and exploitation, that has cleverly returned to the Middle East — in Zionist guise this time — to exploit, evict and oppress all over again. And when we look at them, we do not see fellow victims either: we see not brothers in adversity but pogrom-making Cossacks, bloodthirsty anti-Semites, Nazis in disguise, as though our European persecutors have reappeared here in the land of Israel, put keffiyehs on their heads…but they are still our old murderers, interested only in slitting Jews’ throats for fun.”
People like Brad are able to get beyond those deeply entrenched narratives, and to see the human beings who are trapped by them. What he shares with us about taking his son to the playground and looking, really looking, at the Palestinian children playing there; about paying attention to something many of us might never notice such as the lack of adequate banks in an Arab community (and going out of his way to patronize the one bank that is there!), and connecting these observations with his experiences in the neighborhood he lives in in D.C. are generous and open acts of humanity. It is a gift that he can write about them so elegantly and I can only feel sad that your response to Brad’s thoughtful and humane attempts to make sense of a truly terrible situation should be so lacking in compassion.
B”H The so-called “palestinians” didn’t exist until 60 years ago. No, actually they did: The Jews in Israel were residents of “palestine.” The word “palestine” is a bastardization of “philistia,” extended by the Romans to include not only Philistia, but all of Israel. 1,000’s of years? Arabs now in the Shomron came from Jordan. Even Arabs from the Gallil originated in what is now called Syria and Lebanon. It doesn’t matter anyway. It all belongs to the Jewish People. You talk about historical claims. The Jews have a 3,500 yr. claim, the Yishma’elites having moved to the Arava (thus they’re called Arbs), aside from the incursion and marauding in Israel (see the Bible). it doesn’t matter. The Land belongs to the Almighty. We are commanded to take that which was promised to us. It is not ours to give away, even if we wanted to.
Ben-Yehudah, thank you for your comments. I am glad you took the time to read this blog, as I did with yours. It is clear we disagree on many, many issues, and we are unlikely to resolve them through this disembodied means of communication, but hopefully the awareness is a start.
And let me respond by agreeing, in essence, with 2 of your statements. First, perhaps Israel should have annexed the Territories after 1967. But then you would have had to make everyone who lives there — everyone — a citizen of Israel, no? That would seem to change the demography in a way that I am guessing you would not be satisfied with. Why suggest annexation, then? Or would you have advocated something more than just annexation?
Second, I will refer you back to a post I put up last week: http://semitism.net/2007/05/30/it-was-supposed-to-be-different-here/. In this post, I quoted Buber, who agrees with your statement, “The Land belongs to the Almighty.” And I do, too.
So if the Land belongs to God, even if God commands us to “take” the Land on God’s behalf, the question remains then of what happens to all of the people who then live there, Jew or Arab or other. Do we fulfill the vision of God by living according to God’s commandments, and treating all of those who live within the Land with respect and honor and as neighbors, or according to more nationalistic, earthly pursuits of power and oppression?
Look around you, Ben-Yehuda. Surrounded, I imagine (based on my visits to your region in the past) by barbed wire fences and soldiers and gates and hostility and fear, both from within and without. You may feel you are fulfilling Jewish destiny, which then provides comfort and resolve in the face of everything else, but your post on the buses makes the point implicitly — are you not remote and distant from the Land, even the very Land on which you live?
This cannot be what God wanted for the Land. Are we not obligated, then, to make of the Land what God does want?
B”H Thank you for your comments. You’re right. It is disconnected communication. Please feel free to e-mail me. I am afraid I have found no other way of reaching you besides commenting here. Perhaps, I missed it.
I’m glad Ben Yehuda is commenting here, and I really appreciate the mutually respectful way the discussion is taking place -quite a contrast from the insult-hurling that’s seen on many blogs and boards.
As a non-Orthodox, committed Jew, I’ve struggled for quite a while with the religious Zionist claim to the land. I have great respect for the Orthodox as keepers of strict Jewish law and tradition - perhaps they are those closest to G-d.
Certainly there is an interpretation of Torah and of Jewish history that justifies a Jewish claim to the land. But it’s also true that Judaism has evolved to a point where we no longer need the Temple to worship. We have prayer rather than animal sacrifice. We believe that G-d is everywhere, and that we can worship G-d anywhere.
Do we, then, really need the Land of Israel to show our devotion? Or are we simply distorting G-d’s Word to justify something we want for purely material reasons? - property, wealth, security - all the interests that really drive Israeli policy with regard to land and borders (think how much property values rise in Israeli settlements when the government announces it will be within the separation wall).
I am aware, of course, of the mitzvah to settle the land, in its many iterations.
But, in my human heart, I simply cannot believe that the dispossession, exile, oppression and impoverishment of other peoples is what G-d wanted from us when He commanded Abraham, at the very beginning, to “be a blessing.”
If I look into my heart of hearts and get off the ego band wagon, that is to trust my intuition, how can I not look at all beings as being entitled to the same things? I am the child of antisemitic Jews and am practicing my religion by living it, not dressing up on the high holidays to show off. I implore people to look to their hearts and not their egos. “Trust you Vibes” in today’s language and do not fear to be
different or unpopular.
B”H Andrew, I appreciate your honesty about your feelings. Halacha however, is not understood through feelings, but through the “halachic process.” Many Jews throughout world, thus, can find the results of this process regarding a variety of issues as counter-intuitive, particularly those living in the Western world (ashkinazim). I believe it’s helpful for Jews to ask ourselves to what extent this evolution is really just a result of 2,000 yrs of becoming increasingly “Western,” distancing ourselves from what it really means to be Jewish. The Torah is not politically correct; it is absolutely correct. We can certainly debate to whom we should listen regarding “what the Torah says.” However, Rav Kook ZTz”L and Rabbi Yoel of Satmar, however much they disagreed, they still approached the Torah through the same manner as our Rabbinic forefathers. Non-Orthodox approaches do not, so it is no wonder that they come up with a different understanding of “how one should live ones life,” often trying to second guess that…”HaShem couldn’t possibly have wanted this or that.” This is a feeling response, not a halachic one.
B”H I also appreciate the respect displayed here. Disagreement does not have to mean “not listening” and “not trying to understand.”