Independence Day in Israel

As seen through the eyes of Amaya Galil, Israeli Peace Activist with
MCC Partner Organization Zochrot.

Zochrot was started in 2002 with the support of a small grant from MCC. Eitan Bronstein and fifteen friends founded Zochrot, an Israeli organization committed to promoting discussion of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 within Israeli society. Zochrot organizes visits by Israelis to the sites of destroyed Palestinian villages, where they hear from refugees about the history of the village and how its residents where expelled. Zochrot then places signs in Hebrew and Arabic at the site, bringing an erased past momentarily back to life. “I believe that the right of return [for Palestinian refugees] is a condition for reconciliation,” Bronstein says. Bronstein and Zochrot challenge members of Israeli society, both students and adults, to learn about the erased history of Palestine.

While Israelis celebrate Independence Day this month, Palestinians will remember their own narrative by commemorating the Nakba, which means "catastrophe.” Palestinians see the Nakba as the event that dispossessed hundreds of thousands of their people while Israel was born.

The thoughts offered below by an Israeli show empathy toward Palestinians. Amaya questions whether Israel’s Independence Day should be a day of celebration or instead a day for reflection and accountability to the future of Israel/Palestine and its entire people.


By Amaya Galil, Zochrot Translation to English:Charles Kamen

“Where will you be for the holiday? Are you going to the celebrations in town? To a picnic in the Carmel Forest? It’s really beautiful there! Won’t you come? Everyone’s going.” A few years ago I would have joined them; a picnic out in the country – what could be wrong with that? But something changed. People around me are celebrating, but I’m not.

Once, at one of the picnics, I came across the remains of an old building with a blue dome. I discovered that it had belonged to the village of Ein Ghazal. IDF soldiers expelled its Palestinian residents on July 26,1948, Israel prevented them from returning, and planted the Carmel Coast Forest among the ruins of the buildings it demolished. It was difficult to see the remains, but once I did I could no longer ignore them - the ruins of villages where people lived until 1948.

The Nakba (which means “great catastrophe” in Arabic) began in 1948, when the Zionists began to expel most of the Palestinian inhabitants, to demolish their homes and erase the rich Palestinian culture. The Nakba continues today with destruction of Palestinian buildings, mosques and cemeteries, expropriation of land for the benefit of Israeli Jews, institutionalized discrimination, refusal to allow Palestinian refugees to return home, military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, systematic killings in Gaza, most of whose residents are refugees, and more. We don’t want to see or hear any of this, and certainly not on Independence Day.

As I spoke with people about the Nakba, and learned more about it, I began to ask myself questions and began to get worried. A crack opened in what I had known, and in my identity. The crack made me continue questioning. This educational process allows me to rethink my life here. The Nakba isn’t only the Palestinian’s memory and history. It’s also an event that is a part of my individual and collective memory and identity as an Israeli.

The Israeli collective memory emphasizes the Jewish-national history of the country, and mostly denies its Palestinian past. We, as a society and as individuals, are unwilling to accept responsibility for the injustice done to the Palestinians, which allows us to continue living here. But who decided that’s the only way we can live here? The society we’re creating is saturated with violence and racism. Is this the society in which we want to live? What good does it do to avoid responsibility? What does that prevent us from doing?

Learning about the Nakba gives me back a central part of my being, one that has been erased from Israeli identity, from our surroundings, from Israeli education and memory. Learning about the Nakba allows me to live here with open eyes, and develop a different set of future relationships in the country, a future of mutual recognition and reconciliation between all those connected to this place.

Accepting responsibility for the Nakba and its ongoing consequences obligates me to ask hard questions about the establishment of Israeli society, particularly about how we live today. I want to accept responsibility, to correct this reality, to change it. Not say, “There’s no choice. This is how we’ve survived for 61 years, and that’s how we’ll keep surviving.” It’s not enough for me just to “survive.” I want to live in a society that is aware of its past, and uses it to build a future that can include all the inhabitants of the country and all its refugees.

Recognizing and implementing the right of return are necessary conditions for creating that future. The refugees’ right of return is both individual and collective. Return does not mean more injustice and the expulsion of the country’s Jewish inhabitants. As has occurred elsewhere in the world, ways can be found to implement the return of the refugees without expelling the country’s current residents. That’s what should happen here, and it’s possible. Implementing the right of return will allow us, Jewish Israelis, to end our tragic role of occupiers.

Life doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. There are other alternatives. Palestinians and Jews can together build a society that is just and egalitarian. People will live sanely, not perpetually anxious and in fear of war. And then? Then we’ll really have a happy holiday.

Submitted by Ryan and Heather Lehman, MCC Jerusalem Reps. Pictures taken during a recent Zochrot tour of the village of Simsim.

Knocking Down the Wall(s)

We were recently out at a Jerusalem restaurant with some friends visiting us from the States. Jerusalem is socially, though not legally, separated between Palestinians and Jews. East Jerusalem is where the vast majority of Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents dwell, and West Jerusalem where most of the Jewish residents dwell. We were out in West Jerusalem.

Everything here is political; where you live, where you shop, what you do for a living, whether you call people ‘Palestinians’ or ‘Arabs’…everything. We’ve long since given up trying to guess how someone will react before we tell them what we do here. “Well, we work for an NGO. We do community development.” Vague statements such as this are usually followed with questions such as, “You work with Arabs? Or Jews?”

The waitress asked us if we were tourists. We seized the opportunity. Pointing to our visiting friends, “They are tourists. We live in Bethlehem and work for an NGO. We do community development in the West Bank and work towards peace with both Palestinians and Israelis.” The reaction is always different. Sometimes we get a, “Good luck. It’s a good idea but there will never be peace.” Sometimes we get supportive comments, “I wish there could be peace. I used to visit Bethlehem all the time before the Intifada.” Other times we get a look of pity that says, “How sad. If only you really knew how much they hate us…” We’ve taken to looking at these as opportunities to show people that the ‘other side’ isn’t a homogonous group that views the other as an enemy. We generally talk about our friends, the things we enjoy in either respective culture or society, the things we like to do in different places, whether Jewish or Palestinian. But we often see how our preconceptions of something can trump the reality we see around us.

The waitress looked at us in slight wonder. “Wow. Bethlehem. But it’s very dangerous there.” Polite silence for a moment. “We really enjoy it. There are a lot of things about Bethlehem that we like.” “But you live with the Arabs?” “Yes,” we reply, “we work with Palestinians in the Bethlehem area as well as working with Palestinians and Jews towards peace.” “But it’s so dangerous. You feel safe there?”
We’ve been through this before, explaining that we feel safe, that we enjoy Bethlehem, that we actually feel safer in our Bethlehem neighborhood than we do with all the checkpoints and guards and guns we see in Jerusalem, so we interrupt the questioning with one of our own, one designed to challenge the preconceptions we all hold.

“Have you ever been to Bethlehem?” we ask.
“Yes. I love it. I used to go there all the time. I feel like it’s a different country when I go there. It’s great.” Of course we have to point out this inconsistency to her. “You just said it’s dangerous…but you really like going there?” A pause and a moment of thought. “Well,” she says, “it’s dangerous for people that don’t know what they’re doing.”

And that’s it. The end of our conversation. I wonder if she’ll think again about the Americans she met that live in Bethlehem and say they enjoy it. I wonder if she’ll think about the fact that she enjoys Bethlehem, but she also believes that it’s ‘dangerous.’ I wonder if she’ll think about the fact that the reality she sees every day around her contradicts the categories we often place people in: Jew, Israeli, Arab, enemy, other.

There’s a concrete wall and a barbed wire fence up between Israel proper and most of the West Bank. West Bank Palestinians aren’t allowed to go into Israel without permission from the Israeli government, but Israeli citizens are free to live in most of the West Bank and cross the separation barrier at will. This wall must be brought down, but so must the unseen walls we place between ourselves. Each time we interact with someone and can challenge the reality that they accept, each time we explain that we like Bethlehem, that we feel safe here, that we have Israeli friends who are working to end the occupation at a cost to themselves, we hope we help to break down the walls between people here. We hope people are encouraged to open their eyes and see the reality around them, to see that the labels and categories we apply to the ‘conflict’ here don’t work, and that ‘Jews’ and ‘Arabs’ are actually the people we pass every day and not faceless, impersonal groups on the other side.

Passover and 'Khametz'

It's Passover, or Pesach, here in Israel; Jews around the world celebrate the time when God led the biblical people of Israel out of Egypt and into freedom. I've received emails from Israeli friends wishing me a happy Easter and inviting me to share with them in their holiday of freedom, when they remember the mighty acts God did for them as a people thousands of years ago.

And yet today I look around and I feel that I am in Egypt. The Jews were kept apart and treated as slaves in Egypt. Today, Israel has a systematic policy of separation between Jews and Arabs. There is a separation fence/barrier/wall that physically divides the people. Driving through Jerusalem, one can often see soldiers or police stopping anyone that looks Palestinian and asking to see their ID as they're walking on the road; the same doesn't happen to our Jewish friends and neighbors. The Palestinians aren't slaves to the Israelis, but the Israeli military has the final word on what goes in or out of the Palestinian Territories. Not slaves, but the Palestinian economy certainly lives or dies at the whims of Israel.

In light of this, and as the Passover holiday is celebrated, I invite you to read some Passover thoughts from Rabbi Arik Ascherman. Arik is head of Rabbis for Human Rights, an MCC partner here in Jerusalem. A link to his article is below, and following that are excerpts from a supplement. The hagaddah is the liturgy of the Passover service, and here Arik has included some common questions with some uncommon answers; he offers a chance to remember the poor and oppressed that are with us today as we remember the acts of God that brought freedom to the biblical Israelites. May we remember that freedom from oppression is something that God desires for all peoples.

Ridding ourselves of the Khametz of Arrogance, by Rabbi Arik Ascherman.

Excerpts from the Passover Hagaddah are below.

RABBIS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS HAGADDA SUPPLEMENTS 5769

WHO SITS WITH US AT OUR SEDER?

Eloheinu v`Elohei Kadmoneinu (Avoteinu, Avoteinu vEmoteinu), our God and God of our ancestors, we are gathered around this seder table as b`nei khorin, free people commanded to remember our dark nights of oppression. We have vowed never to become oppressors ourselves. Yet, particularly because we remain deeply aware of those who continue to threaten us and those who deny our right to a homeland, it is easy to harden our hearts to those who have paid an excessive price for our people`s prosperity and security. Our experience as victims blinds us to the possibility that we can be both victims and victimizers at the same time. To be truly free we must banish Pharaoh from our hearts and reaffirm our commitment to honor God's Image in every human being. Recalling the midwives of old, we know that the seeds of redemption are planted when we oppose Pharaoh's command.


Tonight we leave a place at our table for victims of oppression. We renew our commitment to winning their freedom, thereby insuring ours. We particularly remember: (Choose one or more)


A. Civilians in Gaza, Sderot, and the Western Negev. "Otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies," (Exodus 1:10) Pharaoh invoked "security" to justify his oppression of the Israelites. Today, Gazans and Israelis all live in fear and suffering as each side justifies its actions against civilians in the name of self-defense. A cease fire this year ended with the plagues of fear, death and destruction after Israel failed to honor her commitments to allow the free passage of basic goods, and Hamas renewed rocket fire on Israelis. Seven year old Or'el Iliezrov hung between life and death for weeks after a Grad rocket slammed into the family car. Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish mourns the death of three daughters from Israeli tank fire. Hatred grows as it feasts on the blood of innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians, but remains un-satiated.


This night we remove ten drops of wine from our cup of joy, remembering the innocent Egyptians who suffered and died from the ten plagues. We vow to defend ourselves without punishing the innocent.

C. Um Kamel El-Kurd. Newly widowed after police evicted her and her sick husband at 4:00 am from their home in E. Jerusalem's Sheikh Neighborhood as part of a thirty five year campaign to evict 28 refugee families, Um-Kamel has been residing since then in a tent on a dirt lot not far from her home of 50 years. Even the tent is torn down by the police from time to time. Every night is a night of watching for the Ghawi and Hannun families. Evicted at midnight in 2002, they managed to return. Served with new eviction orders, they spend sleepless nights fearing a knock at the door.


Our ancestor was a wandering Aramean. This night we remember that all have the right to a home.


D. Silwan Tonight, 88 families in El-Bustan neighborhood of Silwan, E. Jerusalem live in fear of having their homes demolished to make way for an archaeological park. Above in the Wadi-Hilweh neighborhood, archaeological excavations have caused roads to collapse, cracks in the homes and buckling floors. In Issawiyah, the Dari family faces a third demolition.


Celebrating the seder in the security of our homes, we commit ourselves to work in the coming year so that our National Home rests on a foundation of justice.

Hurshiya Family. After settlers used their guns to prevent the Hurshiya family from farming or grazing their land, the settlers claimed it was theirs because they had been farming it. While RHR helped them to win most of their land back, a settler vineyard still remains, they are often denied the army protection needed to safely enter their land and are now being sued by settlers because the government returned their land to them.


Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsh taught that the sin of the Egyptians was thinking that their might gave them the right to oppress the stranger. This night may we remember that, instead of whips or guns, our outstreached hands must hold scales of justice.


NEXT YEAR IN A JERUSALEM REDEEMED THROUGH JUSTICE AND THOSE RETURNING TO HER THROUGH RIGHTEOUSNESS