I don't have the luxury of Despair: Ghetto Wall of Shame

6 Jan 2010: The Ghetto Wall of Shame

Jerusalem and then yesterday to Bethlehem and Refugee Camps. That is the thing that is most difficult, hundreds of images in my brain.

The thing that is most horrifying is the Separation Wall - which I will call the Ghetto Wall of Shame. GWS.
Brutal, Stalinist, 30 feet high, 8 Meters tall. Thick slab of grey concrete with guard towers at each turn. A cyclone fence with barbed wire stands a few meters away from the wall. Rusting. Brutal. Who is secure with this wall? Are the Israelis also putting themselves behind the Ghetto Walls again? Separated from the world? Believing the myth of “The Chosen People.”Can I get a tape recording of God saying that the Hebrews are “The chosen ones.”?

The wall fills me with revulsion. As a Jew how could we who have suffered so much allow this to happen. Thick grey cement wall separating farmers from their fields. Separating families one from another. Separating a country. Why couldn’t the Israelis have built a wall around the pre-l967 boarders? That should shame every human to the core of his or her being. It should cause profound remorse for every Israeli. However, a few have spoken out. Some who are survivors of the holocaust
Racism and cultural genocide in Palestine. Trying to kill the culture, the people, and life of Palestine. Someone corrected me and said it was more of an Ethnic Cleansing. Ethnic Cleansing? Is that where you take some Ethnics and give them a good bath. Clean out all of their ethnic tendencies? In the case of Israel, washing out all that nasty Arab and Muslim "Salaam Wa Alakom" and make it into a proper "Shalom Wa Alakom." Ethnic cleansing giving the "filthy” Arabs a good bath and making them into proper Israelis where they can get up and sing the Hava Negela? No, it is not ethnic cleansing, it is genocide. Perhaps not as efficient as the Nazi’s, but if Genocide was an Olympic Sport I imagine the Israelis would at least medal in the event. Somewhere behind Stalin, Adolf, but there might be fierce competition for the Bronze – Pol Pot and Ariel Sharon duking it out for third. In this world of madness, I could also see this as an Unreality Show: Genocide in Palestine Served with good Public Relations.
Last night in an art gallery in West Jerusalem, and had an eye opening conversation with an ex pat Jewish woman from Montreal and a Jewish artist from Tunisia. They litany of racism was astonishing. At least in the US, many people have the rudimentary skills to mask it... but this was frank, with no apologies, the only thing that was missing was the word “nigger.”..."The Arabs are such children...No they're not Palestinians...there is no such things... they made this up. They saw that we were creating a nation and then the cry babies decided THEY wanted a country… they aren’t even native to this area…they were imported… when the Israelis came they thanked us from saving them from the Jordanians….the Jordanians were slaughtering them…. they had no water or life until the Israelis came…The Israeli Defense Force is the most ethical army in the world. All the Arabs have full rights as citizens in Israel….”
Full rights as citizens? Excuse me, what about the 1,800 dead in Gaza? The blockade and imprisonment of Gaza? The separation wall? The actions of Irgun and the slaughter of civilians in the l948 by Jewish terrorists?
I tried to speak to this woman, to get past this litany of hatred and bias, to listen, to draw her out. I invited her and her friend to come to Bethlehem with me, lunch on me, let us visit the refugee camps, let us visiting the new Wailing Wall, the Ghetto Wall of Shame. She declined. I would have paid for the taxi and meal for her to talk to this gentleman Dr. Abdelfattah.

Last night walking in West Jerusalem there was the feeling that we, Jews do not have to apologize for being Jews, we can have our language written boldly, the shetel Jews do not have to sulk through the streets. We do not have to worry about the next change of mind and heart of a King and suddenly thrown out of our country. Yes, I did get that sense of pride, of place, and safety for us as Jews. But it is an illusion. There can be no true sense of safety, peace, and belonging with this occupation. Racism is a beast that will devour itself. Hatred always consumes itself and others.

This occupation of the West Bank, with this Ghetto Wall snaking through land seized from Palestinians, with no legal recourse, with an Israeli Secretary of State who said last week, ‘There is a freeze on all new settlements, but the area of Jerusalem does not apply.’ However, the facts on the ground are different. He is a liar or blind, or worse. Settlements are started in Gelal. Settlements are expanding in Bethlehem. Perhaps, they are expanding elsewhere, but I can only speak of what I have seen.

The Israeli government is 100% lock, stock, and barrel behind all the settlements. They are not some isolated group of fanatics the government can’t do anything about, the government wants to increase all the housing, not just a group of small condominiums or a nice chalet, these are small cities of anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 people. Ultra orthodox Jews or some variation, who are given stipends, their housing is paid for, so that they can live in these apartment cities on the hillside of Bethlehem on land that is taken from Palestinians.

The government of Israeli is engaged in a program to build as many settlements as possible. As an Israeli friend said, “These are the facts on the ground, as the maps are drawn, we now see Israeli settlements all throughout the West Bank, and surrounding Jerusalem the government is building more and more apartment complexes solely for Jews to stake their clam to the land. Then more land is taken, without any kind of judicial process or claim of eminent domain.”

In Bethlehem, one Palestinian businessman invested in his property and built a small hotel and resort. He spent approximately $7,000 to build the necessary parking lot, and had all the permits. Then as the Israeli government sponsored settlers were expanding, they expropriated part of his land, and told him he could no longer have the lot.

In this one tiny area, there are hundreds of small and prominent injustices that make a daily life not only arduous, but also brutal and inhumane. I see one young Israeli female soldier with a German shepherd, the dog is playing on a leash, and it reminds me of the Nazis with their dogs. It reminds me also of the dogs at Birmingham Alabama when Bull Connor and his cowards would beat back the civil rights marchers. I cannot believe that a young Israeli would be using a German shepherd as the Nazi guards used them.

I feel like I am in a weird backwards world. Coming out of the Holocaust, the survivors took every grain of bitterness, gut level determination not to let this happen again, every lesson of brutality and humiliation, and savagery and brought it here to Palestine. Of course, with the technological prowess and innovation of modern European, and brought it here. For the most part a European modern culture squaring off against an agrarian people who had been under the occupation of the Ottoman and the British Empire.

I like the playful humor of Palestinians. In spite of a human rights situation that would break the spirit of most people, there is laughter and delight, children play, girls and boys flirt, and there is a fatalism that there will be a transformation. Yet, there is a weariness of spirit, an on-going frustration with making it through the day.

One film Checkpoint at 4 AM shows people lining up to go to work at checkpoint. Waking up so they can walk through the metal gates that look like the cattle gates at slaughterhouses. It can take them up to several hours to get through and then they have to return at night.

Israelis say ‘It is the only way that we can prevent them from killing us with bombs.” But the Palestinians point out to the hillside and say, “The people who are throwing the bombs come from over the hillside and don’t go through checkpoints.”
It is a page from life in the Warsaw ghetto.

In terms of this stark barren land, with a few hardy scrubs of cactus, I do not find a beauty in this arid hot land. In reality, the water will giver out, and despite the best technology, the Israelis will not be able to fill their swimming peoples in their villa settlements overlooking the villages of Palestinians.