Talking Politics (on the 60th Anniversary of the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine)

Here in Lebanon, I feel like I see things from all sides, having befriended people from all the religious sects, and having lived in three different neighborhoods, representing three of the major sects. I’m not with any political party. Actually, I’m against all of them. There’s no one I support. They’re all power-hungry thugs.

So then, can I be like this when it comes to Israel? I make it pretty obvious where I stand on this. When I’m in the US and especially New York or around my fellow former Harvard classmates, it comes up way too much. Here, in Lebanon, it’s a non-issue. I don’t have to explain or defend myself. Everybody, no matter what her background, is on the same page.

Isn’t it silly to make politics so important? To have it be something that could divide people. Here in Lebanon, it’s obvious how political leanings lead to violence. But when I’m in the US, I experience a kind of violence, also. When I talk to people who are “educated” who really think Israel is justified in its policies, I feel under attack. It’s one of the things I hate most about being in the US.

I ask myself: Are these people completely ignorant or do they just not have souls? Of course, I want to think it’s the former. Can I blame people who are only fed the Western media? Maybe they just don’t know any better? But then I think, Daaaag, they have fancy college degrees and have fancy professional jobs. Some people get paid a lot to be consultants and lawyers, to do research and analysis, which means they should have some understanding of world events and issues. And yet, I know people who have all these qualifications and still think that Israel is justified in its ethnic cleansing policies. (They, of course, don’t call it ethnic cleansing.)

My friend, one of those NYC law-firm lawyers, says that the brainwashing/propoganda is non-stop. He goes to fancy dinners and events all the time, and gets his heartstrings pulled as to the sad situation of Israelis who have to live with the constant threat of terrorism. Of course, after September 11, they have a receptive audience in NYC.

Oh wait, back to the issue. Can I put myself in their shoes? Let’s see. Being educated in the US, I’ve read a very good amount of Holocaust literature (The Chosen in 7th Grade, The Diary of Anne Frank in 8th grade, Night, Survival in Auschwitz, Maus). It’s like it’s in my blood. But did I ever read anything about Al Nakba (it means catastrophe in Arabic–the Palestinian version of 1948)? Were there any excerpts by Arabs, Palestinians or Arab-Americans in the school anthologies when I was a student? (Today there are.) Every time I visited Washington, D.C., about four times in my life, I visited the Holocaust Museum. I wanted to. It’s important. My first day at Harvard, a Jewish kid who lived downstairs from me, tried to indoctrinate me with the whole party line (after he found out I was Jewish.) It goes something like this:

1) We’re a small speck in a sea of Arabs who hate us and want to decimate us at any given moment.

2) Everyone else hates us and have tried to ethnically cleanse us throughout history. We’ve never been welcome anywhere.

3) We worked so hard tilling the desert and set up the best military and spy network in the world and miraculously (1967) managed to carve out a small space for ourselves.

4) And anyways, you’re a Christian. You know that God promised us this land.

Christian Zionism makes me ashamed to call myself Christian, and it’s not even theologically Christian anyways. According to my reading of the Bible, the chosen people are those who follow Jesus, who come from any racial or ethnic background. Our Promised Land is not a specific piece of earth; our inheritance and home is in heaven.

Am I big hypocrite? Am I really looking at all sides of the Israeli-Palestinian issue? I like to think so. I have all kinds of information. I’ve made a rational decision based on collecting and evaluating different evidence.

What is this evidence? First, look at news sources that aren’t American. Second, talk to the Palestinians you know. (Do you think they’re all liars?) My American friend who lived in the West Bank throughout the 80s (during the first intifada) talks about:

• Israeli soldiers stopping little kids with plastic bags. Because Israel had banned schools, neighborhoods set up home-school networks. If kids had books, they’d be sent back home.

• Having to break curfew one night to get her kids medicine, a teen-aged Israeli soldier was high and started yelling at her. When she flicked him off in response, he almost shot her. She was saved by his friend who pushed him back.

• A “break your bones” policy where Israel soldiers would come in the middle of the night, pull men from their houses, and beat them up. One night, they let up on her husband because she was really loud and bitchy and American.

More commonly cited features of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, include:

• A landscape completely divided by roadblocks and checkpoints. People can’t visit their relatives in neighboring villages. What should be 10-15 minute trips take hours. People can’t get to their jobs.

• A deliberate policy of bulldozing and burning thousands of ancient olive trees, which symbolize the land and roots of the people. The Israeli Defense Force justifies itself in its need to “build settlements, expand roads and lay infrastructure.” Besides the fact that they are a major commercial crop which many families depend on for their livelihood.

• Humiliation, physical and verbal abuse.

There are only a million documentaries and books on the subject. Go to your public library. I highly recommend Palestine by Joe Sacco. Get some factsheets from http://endtheoccupation.org/. For some information and analysis about media bias, go to http://www.doublestandards.org/biaspale.html and http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/. Any Internet search will bring up all kinds of first-hand accounts and photos of the situation. This is not difficult or hard-to-find evidence. It’s just that some people don’t want to see it.

Israeli policy towards its Palestinian population is very bad, and the US should not support it. US policy in the Middle East is very bad, and it needs to change. US domestic policy that keeps more than 1% of its population (the highest in the world) in prison is a sore human rights violation.

People get offended when I talk about Israel. I get offended that these people haven’t looked at very clear and abundant evidence or have an agenda to obfuscate it. I get offended when people justify, support, and propogate basic human rights abuses.