Probably the best way to start this is with a short bit of accidental wisdom from my older son. I should also probably stop there, too, but since it works so well with my thoughts on my recent trip to Hebron, that I thought I would add the two together. It has been quite hard for me to think about what to say about the essential elimination of life in the Old City of Hebron, or how to say it. Luckily I can always count on the brilliance of a 2.5 year old to help me out of a jam.
We have been trying to teach Eli a bit of Hebrew, or at least get him comfortable with it (he can actually count all the way to arba-im (40) quickly and without a mistake). One of the books we have been reading with him over time is a Hebrew translation of Shel Silverstein’s classic “The Missing Piece.” We always read the Hebrew first, then explain what it means in English, trying to instill at least a few words. But he knows the title primarily in English (it’s a mouthful in Hebrew).
Then, the other day, his class at the YMCA had their end of the year party. So we decided this would be a good occasion to break out a t-shirt of his that we picked up at home awhile back; it’s a red children’s shirt that simply has “Peace,” “Shalom” (in Hebrew) and “Salaam” (in Arabic) on it.
When I put the shirt on him, he looked down and saw the writing.
“What does the shirt say, Papa?”
“‘Peace’, Eli. It says ‘peace’ in English, Hebrew and Arabic.”
“Oh.” Pause. “Like ‘The Missing Piece’?”
I laugh. I then shake my head at how ingenious this is. Then I realize he is still waiting for an answer. “Well, not like the piece missing from the circle in the book. This peace means when people don’t fight with each other. But it’s kind of like the piece in the book, because this kind of peace is also missing.”
“Oh. That peace on my shirt is also missing?”
“Sadly, it is.”
By this time, he was more interested in the Lego blocks he had built into a small column and called his “saxophone,” which he then started to play, so that was that. But it was one of those moments with your kids that you never forget.
And, as I said, it helped me focus on a lot that has been on my mind. Of course, in any place in the world, it’s still a cute story and probably one that any parent would be proud to retell. But here, it comes with so much more.
Because, at any point in time, it’s important not just to know that peace is missing, but why it’s missing. And that changes over time, and is always somewhat different depending on whether you are talking about political/governmental peace or person-to-person/societal peace. Although the former type is what we spend far too much time talking about, it is the latter that really counts, in my mind.
And that peace, the peace between people, is missing because when you are in Israel, the Palestinians are missing. Almost entirely.
And when you’re in Palestine (Eastern Palestine, anyway), although Israel is everywhere – in the form of Jewish-only settlements, Jewish-only roads, the Army, the Air Force and the Wall — and although Israeli soldiers and settlers are all around, the Israeli people with whom the Palestinians must make peace are also missing.
I have remarked on this in other posts from here, but nowhere was this more evident than in Hebron. The Old City of Hebron, the area of the once vibrant souq/casbah, is, quite simply, gone. Military orders, settler violence, settler expansionism, soldiers changing policies from day to day, decimation of the Palestinian economy. Put them all together and you have what I saw in Hebron – shops welded shut, houses empty, streets barren, markets looted, bushes and vines growing in the middle of once-busy streets. (The activists I went with even had pictures from 1999 to prove it, but my memories from being in these bustling areas in 1997 and 1998 were pretty vivid).
(If you want more info, there’s a lot out there. But Meretz USA has a good archive of recent articles and some background pieces at its “Hebron Watch” page. But if you want the full story in one place, look no further than this, as-usual incredible report from B’tselem from this past May.)
I wandered around much of the day taking pictures of essentially the same thing: missing-ness and emptiness. Empty streets. Empty sidewalks. Empty shops (except for those which have been confiscated by settlers to use as new apartments). As B’tselem called it so aptly, it is a ghost town.
Or, at least, a town of Palestinian ghosts, as they exist only in memory. The number of settlers in the city itself is still small (approximately 600 or so, but it gets much larger if you include the ever-expanding Kiryat Arba and other area settlements), but not only are their numbers and their efforts to confiscate Palestinian property increasing, they are ever-present through graffiti that defiles probably 50% of the now-closed shops.
Graffiti like:
“There are Arabs, there are rats.” (Makes more sense as graffiti in the Hebrew, as it’s a bit of a play on words: “Yesh Aravim, yesh achbarim”)
“Arabs to the gas chambers.”
“Arabs are sand n—ers.” (the one I saw of this is signed by the JDL, or Jewish Defense League)
And perhaps most startling to me was that within a 2-minute walk of graffiti saying “Arabs out” was a sign showing the names of the Jewish congregations in the U.S. that had helped support the Hebron settlements with an ambulance. And who knows what else.
Settlers and right-wing American Jews present. Violently and terribly present. Nearly all Palestinians missing.
Such violence and hatred in a city so holy, within view of the reputed tomb of our ancestors Abraham and Sarah, who kept their tent open on all sides to welcome visitors. What would Abraham and Sarah think of a city that had been closed off to its former Palestinian residents, but done in their names?
I still have chills from hearing the muezzin’s call to prayer from the Machpelah/Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, which is now divided into a Jewish holy site and a mosque. What does it mean to hear the call to prayer when there is almost no one who can get there? After all, on one of the main streets that a Muslim could theoretically walk to in order to get to the mosque, I was stopped by a border policeman. And he asked me but one simple question.
“Are you Jewish?”
I hesitated. First because I hadn’t quite understood, or expected, the question. Then I realized what he was asking. And I hesitated again because those few hours had again shaken my beliefs, my understanding of Judaism.
Indeed, I had to answer “yes, I am a Jew” in order to even walk on this road.
Now, in the pre-Civil rights era U.S., unless you were participating in an action, the issue of which restaurant or hotel or drinking fountain you used was pre-determined, in some way, by circumstances and factors beyond your immediate control. Whether you were white or “colored” did not really need to be asked.
But, because I was not wearing a kippah or dressed in black and white, the answer was in my hands. And in some way, I reazlied that an answer of “yes, I am a Jew” was an answer of:
“Yes, I believe in segregation and transfer.”
“Yes, I believe I have the right to walk on this street, and the Palestinians who used to live here do not, nor should any other non-Jews.”
“Yes, I equate Judaism with the gun in your hands, with the settlers whom you protect, and with their ideology which you help implement.”
And, mostly because I am not quick enough on my feet (literally or figuratively) and my car was at the other end of this street, I, in fact, answered “yes.” And I am still thinking about everything it meant. And everything I would like it to mean.
But more than anything, I am thinking about the Palestinians I did not see. Those who are missing. In fact, they were also missing from much of the drive to Hebron. I even read in Ha’aretz that the Jewish National Fund, Ministry of Tourism, and Mount Hebron Regional Council are publishing tourist guides that describe the beauty of the region and its attractiveness as a hiking and travel getaway, in no small part because you can now go as a Jew without really having to encounter a Palestinian. The article is worth reading for some of the quotes, but I’ll excerpt this from the article:
In these publications, there is no separation wall, no bypass roads. There are no roadblocks set up next to almost every Palestinian village, limiting the residents’ freedom of movement to the point of feeling suffocated. There are no ridges that have been harmed to make way for settlements that look like fortified and alienated suburbs. There are no cave dwellers who have been banished from their homes on Mount Hebron, and no pupils who cannot go to school because their settler neighbors constantly harass them. No Palestinian communities appear on the map published in the booklet about the Hebron region.
…The daily Palestinian nightmare gives way and disappears for the benefit of publications that realize the dreams of the Israeli hiker. Now, in addition to the transportation and security infrastructure that allows the Israeli tourist to avoid encountering nearly any Palestinians and only see their communities from afar, there is a marketing and publishing infrastructure. Awaiting the hiker, for the most part, is good food, amazing scenery and spectacular sunrises. The only thing that remains for Israeli hikers is simply to come, to forget all their troubles - and particularly those of the Palestinians.
More and more, Palestinians have simply been removed from the narrative in Israel, from the reality. They are somewhere else, on the other side of a wall, missing. And so too are the Israelis missing from the lives of Palestinians, whose reality grows more and more to be of one where Jews simply exist as Israeli soldiers, as settlers, as the American Jews who send money to support both groups (Friends of the IDF being the military support side).
As political developments evolve in Ramallah and Jerusalem and Gaza, as these discussions between leaders of peoples who do not exist for one another except in the media and in images of the past, I will wonder back to Hebron, wonder back to everything that is missing from this holy place. Palestinians are missing, Judaism is missing, Israelis are missing.
God is missing.
And ultimately, that is why the peace on my son’s t-shirt is missing. But perhaps, one day, like the circle in the Silverstein story, we’ll all find the right piece of peace.
To do that, of course, we have to find each other first.
