Bearing Witness in the Promised Land

by Rob Lipton*

article from, Live From Palestine: International and Palestinian Direct Action Against the Israeli Occupation

Published by South End Press, September, 2003.

A significant proportion of the international volunteers joining Palestinians in resistance to occupation are Jewish. Jewish American Rob Lipton was in Bethlehem with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) when the city was invaded in March 2002, and continues to speak out and organize against the occupation.

I’m the “man bites dog” story: I’m an American Jew who thinks that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is a crime against humanity.

Why do I need to say I am an American Jew as a qualification? What is being done to the Palestinians is wrong; any person with eyes in their head can see this simple fact. For me to say, “it’s really bad and I’m Jewish” shouldn’t matter. I did not have to be Jewish to march in

September 2002 to the besieged Muqata’a, where I witnessed hundreds of Palestinians spontaneously demonstrating in central Ramallah. My eyes were not somehow more acute in Nablus as a result of my being Jewish; any eyes could see Baha Al-baheishe’s death as a cold-blooded murder committed by an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) sniper, any ears could hear the anguish in his mother’s cries.¹ All people should call this for what it is: an occupation that is killing us all.

In Amira Hass’s book Drinking the Sea at Gaza, Hass’s mother, a Holocaust survivor, witnesses people standing by and watching as the trains went to the death camps. I am motivated by this legacy to “not stand by.” I don’t want the prosecution of this occupation to be in my name.

I have been called misguided, a traitor, and self-hating, and these soft words are from family and supposed friends. None of these people have been to Palestine. They have not witnessed the humiliation of checkpoints or seen tanks roaming the streets of densely populated cities. Most Israelis have never been to the West Bank except as soldiers, and many would be hard-pressed to know whether Hebron is north or south of Jerusalem. My brethren in the United States view the West Bank like a terra incognita on a pre-Renaissance map, “There Be Monsters,” printed in bold letters. 

It is easy to manipulate public opinion under this level of ignorance: If you are Jewish, then Palestinians will kill you or at least desire to do so—they are an unreasoning, pre-modern people who simply do not value life as more civilized people do. Such language is the love song of the occupier calling to its victims—the same tune sung in Algeria, South Africa, or Tibet. That Israeli and US Jews refuse to hear this is not a function of them being Jewish and heartless; it is a result of them being locked into a small world of hysteria and doom. So here is the central question: Why do Jews in the United States believe so firmly in a historical and political narrative that, whether as the result of deliberate propaganda or ingenuous error, is so patently erroneous? Given the Jewish tradition of fighting against injustice and siding with the underdog, this unstinting support for Israel is troubling.

Unfortunately, determining an objectively correct vantage point from which to view this conflict is nearly impossible. Many Israeli and US citizens believe that Ehud Barak was generous in his  Camp David offer; few realized it was an ultimatum and not an offer, and that what was offered was a rump state that did not control its own borders or air space or have territorial contiguity between its population centers—a territory that had been described as looking like the holes in Swiss cheese. The question of refugees was never discussed, and East Jerusalem was not to be put under Palestinian control. But what most Israeli and US Jews were told was that “no offer would be acceptable by the Palestinians, who clearly only wanted the destruction of the Jewish State.”¹ That the Palestinians are essentially defenseless and at the mercy of one of the world’s most sophisticated army is lost in the hysteria.

I am a member of Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), one of the largest and oldest progressive Jewish groups in the United States. JVP’s main goal is to stop the illegal, US-supported Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Secondly, we are committed to not allowing the mainstream, pro-Israel Jewish community to speak in our name by providing a progressive alternative. We are composed of religious Jews, Zionist Jews, secular Jews, and anti-Zionist Jews, both Israeli and American (along with some non-Jews). We do not take a position of one or two states, and by virtue of such inclusiveness, we have drawn many previously unaffiliated and/or alienated Jews to our group. We have also provided cover for non-Jewish progressives who otherwise might be labeled anti-Semitic. (They will still be labeled anti-Semitic by some, but much less plausibly so.)

Until 2002 I’d never been to Israel or Palestine. Although I received my Bar Mitzvah in a conservative temple and was properly schooled in the requisite pro-Israel propaganda for most of my early life, I began in my mid-teens to feel unsure of my sentiments concerning Israel. At one point, I vowed to fight with the courageous IDF, whose mission was certain and righteous, unlike the morass of US military’s activities in Vietnam that I read about everyday in the early 1970s newspapers. On the other hand, as a child of the 1960s and a devoted contrarian, I was always on the lookout for the underdog, the forgotten minority.

In this way, I was first drawn to the Zionists supposed long-odd efforts to establish a Jewish state in the Holy Land. This “pure” feeling lasted until I stumbled on the Palestinians, who by their very existence brought into question one of the central jewels of my proper Jewish upbringing, “a land without a people for a people without a land.” After the most cursory and accidental of investigations, I found that historical Palestine, as ruled by the Ottoman Empire, was completely inhabited, and had been for hundreds of years, by a mélange of Christians, Druze and Muslims loosely identified as Palestinians. Jews made up about 1 percent of the population as of 1900.

So I started poking around for more information and was met by virtual silence, both on the page and in dialogue with other Jews. If addressed at all, Palestinians were considered as an afterthought, as a marginal people who inhabited a nether region or as the angry A-rab who irrationally harbored fantastic and anti-Semitic notions of destruction. Most of my brethren still consider Israel an embattled nation with its very existence always hanging in the balance. That Israel now possesses one of the most powerful armies in the world and has an estimated 200 nuclear bombs does not seem to have made much of a dent in these fears. Indeed, the typical response is “of course Israel has a large army, otherwise it would be wiped out.” This historically inaccurate claim still carries considerable power for a people attacked in Eastern and middle Europe for hundreds of years, and who still have the recent memory of the Holocaust to recover from. But the trope of an embattled Israel standing up to the combined might of the Arab world, although quite compelling and another of the crown jewels of my upbringing, is historically unsupportable. Instead of David, Israel has almost always been a military Goliath in the region.

A good Jewish upbringing is hitched to the wagon of the Zionist state of Israel. A good Jew has no choice but to support Israel, it is his or her birthright and duty. Criticizing Israel is wrong. But to hold one’s tongue, both as a Jew or an American, is to be complicit in supporting a state that routinely commits crimes against humanity as a function of officially sanctioned state policy. 

In the United States, there is another myth that all US Jews speak with one voice—the small minority who do not are considered a radical, self-hating fringe. This supposed unanimity is fostered with almost scientific care by forces both in the United States and Israel. In the face of this contrived, monolithic Jewish support, most non-Jews, particularly progressives, have been cowed into sitting on their hands rather than speaking out. Jews who are against the massive human rights violations being committed by Israel have lived in a twilight state, often unaffiliated and alienated from typical American Jewish institutions. (It turns out that in the Bay Area, most Jews are unaffiliated, so “official” Jewish institutions such as the Jewish Community Relations Council, while claiming to speak for all Jews, are actually speaking for a minority.) Under such conditions, the role of an organization like JVP is essential if you are a Jew who believes in a just peace between Israel and Palestine.

In 2002, I traveled twice to the West Bank to participate in nonviolent civil disobedience. In September, I was able to observe how the occupation had changed since my previous visit in April. The Israeli invasion of the West Bank in April was the worst instance of destruction visited on Palestinians in recorded memory. No one thought conditions could get worse. But unfortunately, they could, and by September, three different war crimes were regularly committed by Israel against the Palestinian population: the use of human shields (using Palestinian civilians to shield IDF soldiers), the inhibiting or denial of medical relief, and most callous of all, collective punishment.

As of this writing, most of the major population centers in the West Bank have been placed under some form of round-the-clock curfew, often more akin to house arrest. This curfew is arbitrarily enforced. Sometimes people go about daily life in an almost normal fashion, and at other times, the IDF may fire indiscriminately into a market crowd or chase (with 50-ton Merkava tanks) 10-year-old girls returning from school. This state of affairs has been in effect for months. Palestinian life in the West Bank is completely disrupted, and almost all economic and social activity hangs by a thread.

The September 2002 besieging of Arafat’s compound was clearly meant to be symbolic of the besieging of the Palestinian people. Internationals attempted to bring food, water, and medicine to the compound. Although rebuffed and almost arrested within meters of the Muqata’a, this small gesture of solidarity was a piece of the international effort to stand with the Palestinians in nonviolent resistance to the occupation. Later that same night, also in Ramallah, I witnessed a spontaneous march by hundreds of Palestinians courageously violating the curfew.

In this brave action, two unarmed, nonviolent protesters were killed and many more wounded by IDF fire. In Nablus, I investigated the cold-blooded killing of an innocent 14-year-old boy who was walking with internationals and was falsely reported as “having a Molotov cocktail explode in his hands.” And an ominously growing movement in Israel now advocates Palestinian “transfer” (ethnic cleansing); members of the current prime minister’s cabinet actively support such a policy. Why doesn’t the world act to stop this? 

In my synagogue, when I heard the phrase “never again,” I took it to mean that violence would not only never happen again to Jews, but that such massive crimes against humanity cannot be allowed in general. After my recent trips to the West Bank, where the black flag of IDF crimes² flew almost everywhere I went, this demand became more poignant and troubling than ever. Jewish Israelis, with US backing, are in the process of declaring an entire people illegal. Under such a threatening milieu, I am required, as a human being who happens to be Jewish and a US citizen, to speak out and act. That Jewish victims of one of the worst instances of carnage in recorded history are now oppressing Palestinians is, alas, quite predictable and all too human. The victims become the victimizers. My responsibility is to not let this occur in my name, to remind others that oppression and resistance are universals that are not reducible to membership in one group or another.

More to the point, my experience in the West Bank has taught me something profound, not just about my own limits and strengths, or my role as a Jewish American, but also about the amazing warmth, dignity, and perseverance of the Palestinian people living under the most oppressive of conditions. After I met Baha’s father, a truly gentle and kind man who did not utter one word of hatred against his son’s murderer, I felt a strange sense of optimism. Sincerely decent people live on both sides of this seemingly hopeless conflict. When the occupation ends, I am convinced that Palestinians and Jewish Israelis will quickly learn to live peacefully with each other. And as a Jew who is committed to our prophetic and cultural legacy of fighting against injustice and oppression wherever it may be found, let us allow the promised land to be promised to all.

Notes

1 For details about Baha Al-baheishe’s death, see http://jerusalem.indymedia.org/news/2002/09/77384.php?l=ar

2 The term “Black Flag” is taken from the Israeli Supreme Court’s verdict which found guilty the perpetrators of the 1956 Qafr Qasem massacre, rejecting their plea of following orders and ruling that a soldier has the right and duty of refusing “a manifestly illegal order, on which the black flag of illegality flies.”

* Rob Lipton, Ph.D., is a longtime member of A Jewish Voice for Peace and participated twice in International Solidarity Movement activities in the West Bank during 2002. During the early 1990s he was the Los Angeles director of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a liberal media watch group. Currently he works as a poet and public health researcher in Berkeley, California.

More information about the book: "Live from Palestine: International and Palestinian Direct Action Against the Israeli Occupation" with contributions by CCMEP members and co-edited by CCMEP member, Nancy Stohlman.