Living in a bubble

With respect to what is going on in Palestine, most Israelis “live in a bubble”; preoccupied with living their everyday lives in a modern advanced society. They either don’t know or choose to ignore what is going on right next door less than twenty miles away. For them the West Bank might just as well be Zimbabwe. Few have ever been to the West Bank. They think that “It is much too dangerous”. I have been there many times and no longer think twice about traveling there. Those Israeli Jews living in the upscale West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim can commute to work on the settler road and never have to see an Arab and don’t even have to look at the separation wall. In this area it is being faced with sandstone on the Jewish side so that it blends into the landscape. My Jewish friends are shocked when they hear that I have stayed in Arab East Jerusalem. An Israeli Jew said to me that if you blindfolded an Jew from West Jerusalem or Tel Aviv and took them to East Jerusalem, he would be terrified and would think that he was in Jenin or Nablus. An American developer is building condos in East Jerusalem and marketing them to American Jews as being 7 minutes from the Wailing Wall. I think that the buyers will be surprised to find that all of their neighbors are Palestinian Muslims and the Wailing Wall is only 7 minutes away at 4 o’clock in the morning. Others have had similar experiences.

I received this note from an American student at Hebrew University.

“Until I studied at Hebrew University, with mostly American Jewish but also Israeli students, I did not understand just how high the level of fear is among many of Israel's Jewish citizens and American visitors. When I tell many of my fellow students that I stay on the Mount of Olives, a Palestinian neighborhood near campus, their eyes open wide and their faces tighten, as if I'm either crazy or in imminent danger. When I explain that I work in the West Bank, and go there often to visit friends, their jaws drop. Some are notably disapproving of this and would consider me a terrorist sympathizer, or a radical leftist, or tragically naïve. Many, however, are just curious, wanting to know how dangerous it is. The rewarding part for me is meeting the brave few who have begun to ask questions, who have set off, some timidly, others more confidently, on the lonely road to truth, knowing that it will be a very uncomfortable truth. I am coming to appreciate just how difficult a step that is for them, and I am inspired by their willingness to confront their own deep-rooted fears. The role I've been able to play is to gently push them along the way, even when it isn't comfortable for them. Between those few and the zealots who have no conception of Palestinians as human beings are a great number of people who express nicely packaged sentiments about co-existence but are too comfortable or too afraid or both to advocate for any real change. It reminds me of reading Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail in which he responds to a group of clergymen who had cautioned against what they considered provocative activity.One American woman, with whom I was studying, listed off a dozen or so organizations dealing with things like Arab-Jewish coexistence and reconciliation that she was involved in. When I mentioned that my organization supports Palestinians who engage in nonviolent resistance she looked at me warily. She began to inquire about my experiences with Palestinians. "What is it they want?", "Along with rights, do they have a sense of responsibilities?" I responded by explaining that their sense of responsibility to one another and to their guests, under harsh conditions, is more than admirable. I knew this wasn't what she was looking for.”Israel and its friends abroad need to start asking themselves about their responsibilities to Palestine, instead of always about the Palestinian's responsibilities to Israel. Under the current status quo the responsibility of the Palestinians to Israel is that of African-Americans to Jim Crow and of non-white South Africans to apartheid. None. The Palestinian's responsibility is to engage in a struggle that respects common humanity and seeks to dismantle the current state and replace it with one in which Israelis and Palestinians are not cast into the roles of oppressor and oppressed. The responsibility of Israelis is to stand with them in that struggle.”