Ramblings from a Police State

Kurt is an Ecumenical Accompanier. His job, along with his fellow EA’s from several European countries, is to monitor any situation in which abuse is meted out by Israelis against Palestinians. Kurt and his colleagues go to checkpoints to observe the countless ways in which Israeli soldiers dehumanize individual Palestinian men, women, and children. They can’t intervene, but they can report on what they see. Needless to say, the Israeli military doesn’t like Ecumenical Accompaniers.

Donna sees dehumanizing abuse every day at the Bethlehem checkpoint which looks like a huge military compound. Last week she saw an elderly man refused entry into Jerusalem because he had bought too much produce outside of Jerusalem. You see, Palestinians in Jerusalem must buy Israeli fruit and vegetables, and it’s more expensive. So, until recently, they would brave the checkpoints and buy less expensive Palestinian produce in Bethlehem or Hebron. The Israelis caught on and passed a law that Palestinians, or anyone else for that matter, cannot bring more than one kilo of produce into Jerusalem. The man Donna saw was forced to empty all his bags containing the fruit and vegetables to show to the soldiers and then was turned back. This time Donna expressed her dismay to the soldier who checked her passport. Good for her for taking the risk! Every day Donna witnesses episodes like this while she’s on her way to school in Bethlehem, and this one was the proverbial straw.

Back to Kurt! He reminds me of a young Max von Sydow. He’s strong and stoic. He never says much, but a couple of days ago he was visibly shaken. In his capacity as an EA, he had been asked to witness the demolition of a house belonging to a Palestinian family. The family was given no notice. Soldiers suddenly arrived, threw all of their possessions out of the house, and razed it to the ground with a couple of bulldozers. They owned the land but they had not obtained a building permit. Kurt said that the screams of the wife and daughter will resound in his mind for the rest of his life.

House demolitions happen all the time in East Jerusalem. It’s part of Israel’s intentional policy to make Palestinians “disappear”. What happens is that Palestinians who own a piece of land in occupied Palestine want to build a family home. Or they want to put an addition on an existing house. So, they apply to the Israeli authorities for a building permit, pay a large fee, and wait. The permits are never issued. Sometimes, after years of waiting, frustration prevails, and they build without a permit. It may take the Israelis a while to bring in the bulldozers, but the demolition eventually happens.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is in Israel now. Winner of the 2002 Nobel peace Prize, he came to broker peace. The Israelis don’t like Jimmy Carter. Not long ago he authored a book called Palestine: Peace not Apartheid which exposed Israel’s internal policy regarding occupied Palestine, much to Israel’s dismay. Of course Israel doesn’t acknowledge the existence of Palestine. Israel calls Palestine “Judea and Samaria”, and considers it part of Israel. Jimmy Carter hit the nail on the head in calling Israel’s policy “apartheid”. All we need to do is look at a United Nations OCHA map to see what Israel has done to occupied Palestine. The apartheid wall, the illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory, the exclusive settler roads that join the illegal settlements to one another, and the ubiquitous checkpoints have turned occupied Palestine into a series of “Bantustans”, just like in apartheid South Africa. This is an ongoing Israeli policy in spite of a number of UN motions asking Israel to cease and desist. So, there is no chance of a two-state solution because there is no state for Palestinians to live in – just a series of isolated “Bantustans”. Jimmy Carter was right on! Of course, the top Israeli leadership ignored President Carter, and publicly insulted his ability.

What is frustrating about all of this is that everybody here, observing all the things I’ve described above, knows what is happening. But the story doesn’t get out. There’s never more than a muffled whisper in the North American press of what’s really happening to the Palestinian people in their own country. The Israeli lobby in North America and influential organizations like the Canadian Jewish Congress do a good job of stifling the truth and upholding Israeli propaganda. When the Israeli Air Force attacks Gaza City with smart bombs and kills dozens of Palestinian civilians, the Israelis are described as courageously defending themselves against an implacable enemy. When the Palestinians launch their homemade rockets, attack a checkpoint, or, worst of all, find an individual who is so dehumanized by Israeli aggression and oppression that he is willing to launch a suicide attack against his enemy, the North American press calls it terrorism. A simple definition of terrorism is “the act of instilling terror in the hearts of the enemy”. If Palestinians are terrorists, then the Israelis are even more so.

Jewish organizations that record acts of anti-Semitism now include all anti-Israeli statements as anti-Semitic. If any of these organizations read what I have written, then I guess they will call me “anti-Semitic”. Let me state categorically that such a judgment would be patently untrue.

I am, however, definitely against Israeli policy.