"You can't be a democracy and keep 3.5 million Arabs under an occupation"
Conversations With Israeli
Peace Activists
Eric Blair in Israel
April 13, 2002
You can't be a democracy and keep
3.5 million Arabs under an occupation.
Chaya Amir, a charismatic, vital elderly woman who still speaks English with a
New York accent after 52 years in Israel. She and her husband, Shmoyle, are
sitting in front of me on the bus to a demonstration at Jenin checkpoint. Our
goal is to get food and medicine into the city, now under invasion and
reportedly enduring a massacre surpassed only by Sabra and Chatilla. Alone on a
busload of Israelis and unfamiliar with the local politics, I start asking
questions, and Chaya is happy to talk.
"My first demonstration was for May Day in Union Square when I was 18" she
begins. "I came to Israel because I thought I could save the world - it was
right after the holocaust. I was saving the world, saving the Jews, saving
myself, and building a socialist world. Back in 1950, we thought we would build
a bi-national state, a democracy, a brotherhood of man. I was
idealistic, I thought that every day was a battle in which you improved the
world." She nods her head, sadly. "I joined a kibbutz, but that's where my
disillusionment began. All of the socialist ideas were inward rather than
outward, there was no concern for the Arabs. All that the kibutz wanted was to
expand it's land and improve it's economy. That meant taking Arab land, and
there was complete indifference to that."
Our conversation is broken by Hebrew over the bus's loudspeaker. Chaya
translates: "The number one rule today is to mix Jews and Arabs, men and women.
They'll try to divide us and beat up especially hard on the Arabs."
Who is "they" I wonder philosophically?
Doing civil disobedience with Palestinians in the West Bank, it was easy
for me to think of the soldiers we confronted as "the Israelis." I'd
unconciously formed a monolithic sense of the Israeli people, somewhere in the
background behind their army. I knew better, but knowing is different from
feeling and experiencing. Today, I'm with Israelis who, like their Palestinian
brothers and sisters, see the Israeli Army as a divisive, oppressive "other."
Chaya says her days of organizing are behind her, though she still comes to
demonstrations and works for a worker's rights organization. Before the
Intifada, she had focused on Palestinian low-wage workers, but now, of course,
those workers are trapped in the Palestinian bantustans.
I ask a general political question (now forgotten), and she begins again: "I'm
not sure if there is a future for Israel," she says, without sadness, but also
without sounding hopeful. "We have created so much hatred over what we've done
for the Palestinians. In thirty five years [of occupation] we haven't
allowed them to develop anything [for themselves]. Their economy only exists
only to consume our products and provide cheap labor. It had been called the
'Great Enlightened Occupation'" I'm startled, I've never heard this piece of
propaganda.
Pausing, she looks out at the passing countryside: a kibbutz is just off the
highway as we approach the green line. "The time will come when there will be
some kind of poetic justice." I ask for elaboration. She suddenly seems tired.
"Unless Israel changes radically, there is no future. Israel is very
ethnocentric, very theocratic, and SO anti-arab. We're not a democracy at all.
You can't be a democracy and keep 3.5 million Arabs under an occupation."
Again, the loudspeaker breaks through, and Chaya's translation is forthcoming.
"If there's tear gas, don't panic. Just take it easy and it will go away" she
says, smiling again with a bit of a wink. She's still organizing, I think to
myself.
Visions of Swastikas Fill My Head
I'm walking from the bus station to my hostel, and catch up with Etti, who
is also heading home from the demonstration at Jenin checkpoint. She walks
briskly, concerned for her 9 year old son who she left at home during the
demonstration. "He's ok, his father is in touch with him for security," she
says,
for her own benefit I'm sure. Security is such a common word here, I think
to myself.
"Did you see the convoy of buses on the way back?" She's referring to a
police convoy we passed heading toward Tel Aviv from Jenin. I had noticed.
The scene of two weather beaten buses, surrounded by police vehicles and
packed with Arab men had drawn a gasp from everyone. The windows on the
police bus were narrow, barred, and wrapped with barbed wire. The effect
seemed deliberate and symbolic: the occupants of this bus are subhuman,
dogs, terrorists. We'd stared at each other across the traffic lanes for an
infinite moment.
"I felt as if we'd done nothing today," continues Etti. "When I saw the
Arabs on the bus, I wanted to get out, to demonstrate, if only to show them
that we are not all this way."
We walk and talk a bit more, a conversation well fueled by the days events.
She starts speaking of the settlements. "We need to give them back. I feel
that they are not mine, I don't go there, I am not welcome. If I have
friends who live in the settlements who invite me for dinner, I don't go.
I've been reading again about Hitler. I've read before, but I wanted to
revisit it."
I wonder why she mentions this now, in this line of thought. "Do you think there is any similarity between fascism and the ideology of the settlers," I ask, worried that I'm being provocative. "They are the same. There is 'the Fatherland,' the 'chosen people.' Just change 'Jew' for 'Aryan' and it is the same."
I'm stunned to hear this from an Israeli, but my experience here is
limited. She continues "When I was in the army, everything was quiet, it was
before the first Intifada. We weren't worried about the settlers. They were
just a few then. Like the men in brown shirts, they started quietly, and nobody
noticed them. Now, they are in control."
I ask her if she has ever been to the West Bank. She hasn't. Would she go?
No. She assumes I'm asking if she would visit a settlement. Would she go
to meet Palestinians? "I don't know how, I don't meet any Palestinians" is
her answer. But after a moment, she answers again. Two weeks ago I was at
the demonstration at Al Raam checkpoint, near Ramallah. They [soldiers]
were shooting at us. I know because I was hit in the foot with a plastic
bullet. I went down, and was carried into a home by Palestinians. They
didn't even speak English, but they took care of me, and dressed my wound."
As she's saying this, we reach Ben Yehuda street, where we part ways.
Saying goodbye, she says "It is so hard. I live in this beautiful city,
people are going to the beach, yet all this is happening there. We must do
something more. For Americans it is far away in Afghanistan. Here we must
face the reality."
* Eric is one of four Coloradans currently in Palestine joining many
internationals in solidarity with Palestinians in ending the illegal Israeli
military occupation of Palestine. More on their trip at:
www.ccmep.org/palestine.html