Schwartz - An Idea for Jumpstarting a Nonviolent Intifada

I think the reasons why Nonviolence is so unpopular among the Palestinians is because a) Nonviolence is wrongly conceived as passive, which is due to the fact that b) its theories and success rates remain in languages they can't understand, specifically English and fus'ha Arabic, so that c) only an elite few can understand the ideas, which actually worsens the possibilities for Nonviolence even more because d) it lacks the true legitimacy that can only arise from the hearts and minds of the masses. Nonviolence's documents have never been translated into the amiyyah and disseminated, so that the people can read the ideas for themselves, debate and discuss the possibilities.

What I want to do is 1) make a sheet with eloquent excerpts from Gandhi, King, Mahmoud Taha, Badshah Khan and others that explain both the beliefs and tactics of Nonviolent action; 2) translate this sheet into the Palestinian amiyyah; 3) at the bottom of this sheet, place the Quranic verses regarding Cain and Abel (5.27-31); 4) and then go to Ramallah and pass them out: to put the ideas into their hands, help them to feel they they have another choice besides eternal suffering or eternal warring; and when they are thus empowered they might even organize among themselves, separate from the militias, and make this revolution theirs, and more, seek to liberate both themselves and Israel from this cycle of oppression and terror. And if they decide to just crumple up the pamphlets and toss the ideas away, then that's their choice, too.

Do you know anyone who can help me either a) translate these excerpts into the amiyyah and b) distribute them here in Palestine? If so, please leave a comment here or e-mail me at nyspaceman@writing.com.

Schwartz - Return to Ramallah, Au Revoir Arafat

November 23rd, 2004 Almost two weeks ago I returned to the West Bank to attend the funeral of Yassir "Abu Amar" Arafat in the Muqata, the former British, then Jordanian, then Israeli prison which became the capitol building of the Palestinian Authority. I delayed publishing this entry because my friend Wisam ibn Khaled el-Hajji had borrowed my digital camera, and I wanted to wait for his photographs--which, thankfully, were well worth the wait. He returned the camera to me yesterday, and I've uploaded the best onto this blog entry. All photographs not marked "AP" in the lower right-hand corner were taken by Wisam.

Click on continue reading...

November 16th, 2004 How I got into the West Bank was somewhat humorous. A Palestinian from Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salaam tried to drive me to the checkpoint near Modi`in, but the soldiers had already blockaded it. Then he drove me up Highway 6, the main thoroughfare of Israel which runs along the Green Line. We pulled up to another checkpoint. Nervous inside but the epitome of journalistic calm on the outside, I approached one of the soldiers. A monstrous Caterpillar bulldozer was moving around the concrete blocks that served as the checkpoint.

"Hey," I said, "I'm a journalist. Can I go through?" "Where you wanna go?" he asked. "To Beit Sira, near Maccabim, with the huge mosque." He shrugged. "Okay." And that was that.

My contact in Beit Sira came and picked me up. We spent time in his house before driving through the mountains of the West Bank, weaving in between caravans taxis and automobiles decorated with flowing black banners and posters of Yassir Arafat. After about an hour we slipped between two huge concrete boulders and passed into Ramallah by a southward side road. Then we unloaded from the jeep and walked to the Muqata. This was around 10:30 in the morning.

Almost four hours later I stood in the heart of the Muqata. The day had been gruelling and boring. The parade of mourners contained few spectacles. At one point a band of communists passed through, tossing leaflets from the Popular Liberation Front of Palestine into the air. Sometime later, two men strode through the crowd atop horses, the rider in the lead bearing the French flag. The horses began to panic; thankfully the two men left before anyone could get hurt. And here and there passed the Shuhada al-Aqsa, known in English as the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

This militia--called guerillas or freedom-fighters by some, terrorists by others--is controversial, and not just among Israelis and Westerners. While many Palestinians cheered them on, many simply ignored them, and some even sneered at them or sighed with exasperation. The Shuhada al-Aqsa specialize in suicide bombings against military and settler targets. Rarely do they attack civilians within Israel proper. According to the laws of guerilla fighting as laid out by such theorists and legendary practitioners as Franz Fanon and Ernesto "Che" Guevera, the Shuhada al-Aqsa can be labeled with some accuracy as guerillas and not terrorists. Yet, this partially depends on whether or not you consider Israeli settlers civilians or not. Also, they do not restrict all their operations to just the West Bank: the recent suicide-bombing in the French Hill district of West Jerusalem, while targeting a bus station frequented by settlers and soldiers, was outside the boundaries demarcated by their symbolic (and some say actual) leader, Yassir Arafat, as the borders of the future sovereign Palestinian state. Among the Palestinians, the Shuhada al-Aqsa are controversial more because of their role in the Intifada: the Palestinian masses have suffered greatly from attacks from the IDF inflicted upon West Bank towns and cities ostensibly in retaliation for Shuhada al-Aqsa attacks.

I myself consider them to be terrorists, because whether or not they are restricting their assaults on settlers and soldiers, they are trying to utilize fear for political ends, even if those ends are essentially just (emancipation of the Palestinian people). They are not simply guerilla fighters: if they were, they would not attempt such spectacular propagandist attacks as suicide-bombings. True guerilla fighters, in my opinion, let their actions speak for them; they do not need spectacle and terror to achieve their aims. Take for example Che Guevera and Fidel Castro in the Cuba Revolution: for two years they sat in the hills of Cuba fighting soldiers and police, sabotaging only those services (such as freight rail-lines) which benefited the Batista dictatorship. In their day-to-day dealings with normal Cubans, they were benevolent, friendly, conversant, willing to debate or just chit chat. The result? Eventually hundreds and then thousands of peasants, then city-dwellers, flocked to their cause, not so much because they exactly agreed with Castro's political philosophy, but because Castro and Che were heroes in that most general sense: they cared about the well-being of the nation and were tyring, somehow in someway, to truly better the situation.

Compare this to the Shuhada al-Aqsa, who stalked the streets of Ramallah and the courtyard of the Muqata, masked and armed with kitanas, silvery handguns and kalashnikov rifles. The intimidation and dread was thick and oppressive; I even sensed it in those who praised them as they passed. Looking back, I snicker, because they aren't just inflicting fear into the Israeli public for some mad agenda of eye-for-an-eye nationalism, but in their own homeland they strive to instill that pagan awe of the almighty: when they flash their guns and stare at you from behind their masks, they are really saying to you, 'I was once completely weak but now I am all-powerful. I hold your life in my hands. Worship me.'

But alot of Palestinians are sick of them.

The news agencies reported that it was chaos in the Muqata: throngs of the desperate and yearning flooded the helipads and assaulted Arafat's coffin. I don't quite remember it that way. The event was chaotic because of the security services, who kept breaking us into lines, having us sit (the last thing you want to do in a giant crowd) and then having us stand, moving us around. When the helicopters arrived, there was a rush toward the helipad. My friend Wisam and I came within a few meters of one of the giant desert-colored mechanical beasts--and then the Shuhada al-Aqsa fellows began to fire their guns, and then the security services. At that point, most of the crowd, who had come to pay their respects, indeed to cry, seeking some final communion with their leader and some carthasis, simply turned around and walked away from the helipad. My sense was that as a whole, we were all disgusted by this display of medieval barbarity with modern guns. This was not the militias' moment--indeed, nor was it even my moment, for I was there somewhat voyeuristically, to witness history, to grab a scoop; and I was also there to support the Palestinians, to feel their sorrow as much as I could; and I was there to try and figure out this controversial man, this murderer, liberator and statesman, Yassir Arafat--no, this was the Palestinians' moment, in a way a collectivized yet deeply private moment.

------------------------

November 23rd, 2004 I spent the rest of the weekend in Beit Sira. It was good to be back. It was my first Eid al-Fitr in a Muslim land--I've celebrated three previous ones, two in America and one in Britain--and my first since I stopped practicing the Islamic rituals for good. There was no party, but the mourning was quiet, subdued, beneath the skin. I had lots of interesting conversations.

After I left, Wisam went to pay his own respects to Arafat. Along the way, and over the week-long holiday, he snagged these photographs. Enjoy! [Warning: these photographs are actually linked from one of my Geocities account, which is sometimes fickle. If the photographs are not appearing, try waiting a few minutes then reloading.]

Lion's Square, Ramallah, demonstration in honor of Arafat

Ramallah, demonstration in honor of Arafat

Beit Sira, Eid al-Fitr, me playing billiards--that's Wisam in the red, wondering what the hell I'm doing

Just as Israeli society suffers from intense militarization (try to count how much bulletin board and magazine space and television air-time goes to advertisements with military themes and you'll run out of fingers and toes before the hour's up; and everyone, even the damned newscasters, do their best to act tough and cynical), Palestinian society suffers from intense guerillization. At the funeral a man proudly displayed his toddler boy dressed up as a Shuhada al-Aqsa fighter, done up in mask and army jacket, armed with a plastic kalashinikov. This little Beit Siran boy is yet another example of this ongoing quiet tragedy of mass-mindedness and societally-approved violence.

Beit Siran children. A very heartwarming photograph.

Arafat's grave, Muqata, Ramallah.

Arafat's grave. There is something profoundly painful about that security guard's face.

No, your eyes are not lying to you: those are indeed Hasidic jews holding Arafat's poster at a Palestinian rally. I couldn't get clear information about them from Wisam. Apparently, though they are part of a peace group, they are nevertheless controversial because they live in Beit Nuba, a town about which Beit Sirans and other Palestinians have talked to me with much agitation and disappointment in their voices. I intend to do more research into it. That said, though, these are powerful photographs, testimony to the universal yearning and search for justice and peace by all peoples. Whether or not certain ideologies or leaders can deliver the goods for that yearning is another issue; what's important, these photographs remind me, is that there are thinking and active people who, no matter what the conflict, no matter what the hypocrisy within themselves and others, remain steadfast in their determination to find resolution, perhaps even reconciliation, in our troubled modern age.

Once again, special thanks to Wisam for his artist's eye.

Schwartz - Statement of Position Regarding Israel

Some of my readers fear I am tilting lopsidedly in a “pro-Palestinian” manner and would like me to make a statement clarifying my view of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Click on continue reading.

Well, first off, read my blog entries closer and you’ll see that almost always where I mention the plight of the Palestinians, I also mention the socioeconomic plights of the Sepharadim and Falashim, the racism toward Asian-African Jewry who have been petitioning for several years to be granted the same Right of Return as any other Jew, as well as exploitation of the Bedouin, Thai, Cambodian and African nannies, laborers and janitors. All these groups are discriminated against or manipulated in various ways by the Ashkenazi-centered nationalism of Avoda and Likud Zionism.

Second off, I’ve meditated on this next issue and have come to certain conclusions: if anyone is expecting from me an outright condemnation of Intifadist violence against civilians, they will be sorely disappointed for several reasons: 1) Read my blog entries closer and you’ll see that I am against all violence, especially when it is employed for political reasons, no matter how just the basic cause. I draw a sharp distinction between the use of force, i.e., international peacekeeping troops, national or personal defense, and radical nonviolent demonstrations, and the use of violence, that is to say, war, terrorism, genocide, occupation, assassination, rape and enforced impoverishment. 2) I will not waste any breath prefacing every criticism I make of the State of Israel (or for that matter, any state, government, political party, leader) with a ritualistic condemnation of terrorism. Doing so is as pointless, and worse, as morally, emotionally and intellectually weak as always prefacing every statement about the 1948 War with a condemnation of the Holocaust or a condemnation of European imperialism in the Middle East, or prefacing every statement about the Gulf Wars with a condemnation of Saddam Hussein, just because by not doing so I might hurt the feelings of some oversensitive and manipulative Jews, Arabs and Americans. Anyone with half a brain and an ounce of good ethics should understand that genocide, empire and dictatorship are evil, as is terrorism and all forms of political/politicized violence. Words have power; what you say is so often connected to the energy of your soul. So whenever there is the pressure to pay lip service to what-should-already-be-understood, that pressure can only be arising from a cynical and controlling source, that is to say, the warmongers and tyrants who try to compel history toward dubious ends and by their manipulation of mass media and political discourse try to marginalize all opposition to their schemes. Thus, any concession to them only weakens one’s own soul by burning the incense of your dignity upon the invisible altar of their megalomania. 3) Since most of my readers either believe in democracy or are living in democracies where peace and prosperity should be the highest collective ideals, the condemnation of Intifadist violence and all political/politicized violence should be understood implicitly, as something fundamental to everything I say and write. Anyone who asks or even demands of me or anyone else who is and has always been an advocate of democracy and human rights demonstrates a weakness in themselves, not I—a weakness in their own convictions and their own sense of self. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about, because I have cracked and whithered so many times in the past as well, demanding of everyone and everything a condemnation of this and that.

Third off, I am only critical of the State of Israel because I care. My mother has always said that there are many kinds of love, one of which she called “tough love,” a part of which is to constructively criticize the object of our affection, no matter how uncomfortable the subject—and since I am half Jewish, criticizing Israel is always difficult. And it irritates me that people believe it is possible for one to be “over critical” of a state or a government, as if these political entities have feelings, like a person, and might collapse if we happen to bring its attention to the big fat hairy wart it’s let grow on its nose... or the cancer it’s let fester in its heart. As some of the Founding Fathers of America believed, states and governments exist to meet the needs of their citizenry. When JFK proclaimed, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country,” he got it only half right and all wrong. A country can only keep our allegiance if it does not, on purpose or by neglect, hinder our potential. When a country fails to do this, the citizenry must rise up and bring about a change. But more importantly, each of us belongs to a larger community: the human species. Our fellowship in Mankind supersedes all psychological boundaries. In light of this, the political and cultural organizations of the world—the nation-states, kingdoms and republics, religions and societies—are simply an expression of the multifarious Human Spirit, as it tries in various ways to distribute its precious few resources in such a way that it can be existentially fruitful and multiply. Thus, nothing manmade is so sacred as to somehow be teflonesquely supreme, untaintable, because in the end there is always more room, more need, for perfection.

Because I am half-Jewish, many Jewish Israelis and Americans have asked if I am a Zionist. Well, while I recognize that, a) Zionism as an incredibly rich, multifaceted and unique philosophy and movement encompassing politics, religion and art, is not only a very old phenomenon but also grossly misunderstood in the modern era; b) that the particular type of political Zionism that went into the creation of the State of Israel was not the type dreamed by Theodor Herzl; and c) that it is perfectly possible to be a Zionist and believe in a two-state, even a single-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—I myself do not believe in Zionism. I believe in a Jewish Homeland, situated in the old British Mandate of Palestine, wherein Jews may live, work, vote and defend themselves freely, alongside other peoples, in particular the indigenous Arab populations. I do not believe in a Jewish State, that is to say, a polity based exclusively on Jewish ethnicity and culture. Why not? Because I believe that nationalism, be it American, Jewish, Arab, Southern Sudanese, Afghan, etc., is ultimately deficient because it is not universal but tribal. The great prophets and sages—Elijah, Jesus, Muhammad, Confucius, Joseph Smith—always had in mind the ultimate fate and destiny of the human species. While they may have directed their energies to specific peoples and places, their eyes were always on the greater prize: truth, justice and redemption for all. This is why Israel inevitably must confront itself or be destroyed: as a strictly defined ethno-religious democracy, the contradictions of its ideology must be unwound, lest they wrap around the nation-state’s throat and choke it into stagnation and decay. For the last fifty years the State of Israel has been imbued with explosive experimental energy. But this electricity is becoming increasingly diffuse as militarism and bourgeoisie yuppism steadily grow more and more entrenched in the national psyche. The buoyancy of the nation-state is only surviving with the influx of millions upon millions of Russian immigrants; but eventually the geography will simply not be able to sustain a bigger demography than what presently exists, and the Israelis will have to reconfigure their historical narrative and their vision of their future, or perish under the terrible weight of their own slothfulness. Salvation will not be simple for the Israelis. They have usually tried to reconcile their ethno-religious nationalism with their universal democracy by either describing the State of Israel, like the kingdom of old, as a “light unto other nations,” as “chosen,” or simply “just another nation.” But they all know, deep down inside, that none of these solutions are sufficient. The answer, I believe, does not lie in rejecting these notions, but somehow reconfiguring them and combining them with new notions—as well as new political and demographic (i.e., a binational Arab-Jewish state) formulations—to unlock new possibilities.

* * *

I know these statements may be tough for some to read, especially for Americans. They won’t understand how I could possibly be saying these things, believing these things. Well, the Israelis and Palestinians have been teaching me a few things.

The Jewish Israelis have been teaching me a powerful lesson, one lost to most Americans: it is good to disagree. Division is okay.

Why is it that Americans demand “even-handedness”? Why is it that our leaders in the USA, especially those on the liberal/Left side of the ideological aisle, must always make huge concessions in the name of lovey-dovey “unity” and “bipartisanship,” as Kerry did after he lost the 2004 presidential election? Why is it that everyone in America seems to believe that if anyone disagrees with each other, the entire nation-state shall crumble?

The Israelis may do stupid, stupid things, but goddammit they are tough. For fifty years they have handled division amongst themselves while under military, economic and diplomatic siege on almost all sides—in fact, they have flourished! I think the division played a central role in their prosperity, helped them to be so strong.

Are Americans so soft and pampered, cuddled between hippie Canada and impoverished Mexico—not exactly fearsome warrior-states—that we can’t even tolerate a congressional or presidential candidate who’ll say, no proclaim “I think Bush, his administration and his kind of Republicans are liars, crooks, thieves, murderers and should be kicked out of office in every election, and failing that, impeached for their crimes against the American people and all the world”? In the battle for the salvation or damnation of a nation’s collective soul, there can be no surrender, and no time wasted for illusory shows of “bipartisanship.” Let there be division! Let us once more believe in the power of conversation, debate and argument! Unity shall arise of its own volition, not because we will it to!

And the Palestinians have been teaching me a powerful lesson in courage: to be the one who does stand up, to not tolerate the injustice and hypocrisy anymore, to say what he thinks, and to demand a change and never, never relent. And even if the tyrants rain fire and brimstone upon me for my insolence, I shan’t bow down. I shall raise my fist up to the fiery heavens, pen clutched tight, the moon of truth at my back, and split the atom of the Human Spirit with my words.

-----------------------------
I'm just curious to see how many people are actually reading this...


Counter

Schwartz - The Curtain is Beginning to Close

[Palestinian protester in Jerusalem. Photograph courtesy of AP]

These are dark days for the Palestinians. Rumors are in the air that Yassir Arafat has been poisoned, most likely by Mossad, the Israeli foreign security service. If Arafat dies and it can be medically proven that Arafat's condition was due to synthetic toxins, the Intifada might just explode into a full-on insurrection. There is no telling where matters might go from there, with an American presence fighting insurgency in Iraq and surrounding Arab regimes--and their populations--jittery with the US presence in the Middle East.

If Arafat passes away, Palestinians have told me that there must be elections immediately. Abu Mazen and Abu Ala must not make any unilateral deals with the Sharon government, for doing so will spark a fitna, a civil war among the Palestinians. [For more information on contenders for the Palestinian presidency, see this article.]

Click on continue reading...

Also, unfortunately Arafat's death does not necessarily mean that the US and Israel shall no longer have an excuse to prevent reinitiating the peace-process. Bush and Sharon marginalized Arafat by deeming him genocidal and murderous; but they have also deemed all Palestinian political organizations as terroristic. So, if the Palestinians erupt into fitna, this will only help Sharon's colonial agenda for the West Bank: he can simply declare all Palestinians terrorists and begin to militarily be rid of them. But if there are elections and a Fatah candidate wins the Palestinian presidency, there is a slim chance that the US and Israel may decide (or be compelled by their electorates) to reinitiate the peace process. What is certain, however, is that if a Hamas candidate wins the presidency, then Palestinians' days are numbered. Electing Hamas into power would be the Palestinian equivalent of America's recent election of the belicose and murderous George W. Bush: both peoples know better, they know that the Republicans and Hamas incite more hatred toward their respective nations because they have committed grievous crimes against humanity, but out of fear and anger, they vote for them anyway.

[T-shirt rack in Jewish Quarter of the Old City, Jerusalem]

Israelis, for their part, strike me as being very quiet. Indeed, all of Israel proper is still, as if the very soil itself were awaiting the first thunderbolts of Armageddon's storm.

They try to bluster and posture self-confidence: 'What does Arafat matter anyhow?' they say with a disdainful wave of the hand, 'he was a son of a bitch.' And they leave it at that.

But everyone here knows that heretofore lethargic history is starting to budge, and in the next few months it may break out into a cataclysmic sprint into the unknown. With one leader dead and the other, Sharon, ancient and near death himself, soon the curtains shall close on this fifty-year drama's first act... but shall the genocidal rivalry that defined these two men go with them to the grave?

Both Israel and Palestine are enterring new existential territory. Yet, it seems that, for now, only the Palestinians are willing to admit this fact.

[Independence Hall, Tel Aviv. What shall be the future of the Jewish State?]

---

This is an experiment. I'm trying to get an idea about the traffic to the blog.

Schwartz - An American Storm in the Holy Land

"I get so frustrated by visitors to this place. They all act like we live in a bubble, as if what we're doing here is an illusion and that what's going on out there, in Israel and Palestine, is the reality. But this is the reality. Israelis and Palestinians have been living together for fifty years, but they keep believing otherwise."
-Rayek Rizak, former mayor of Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salaam

Thursday, 12 August 2004

For the last few days I have been working with Voltaire, a Palestinian resident here at Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salaam, former shepherd and now teacher at the village's elementary school. We have been digging holes and posting signs along the side of the road that winds its way up to the village from the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. It's good, hard work. I have to wake up by 6 AM every morning--quite a feat for a city boy!--and work for several hours on this project. Voltaire is excellent company. True to his name (the philosopher was his grandfather's favorite, which was why Voltaire's father chose the name for him), he is very calm, reflective, meditative, with a Socratic gaze as sharp as the pickaxe he wields.

By 10 AM, the unmerciful Middle Eastern sun finally begins to reach the peak of its Apollo journey to the throne of Allah in the center of the firmament. But before that happens, the earth is blanketed by the cool shadows of long white clouds, and a refreshing, electric breeze rolls down the valleys. It caresses my face; a static charge tickles the stubble on my chin and swirls like a dustdevil in my nostrils. We're at the top of one of the hills that rise toward the peak upon which sits the village. I take a moment to look out across the land. To my left, the farms of a nearby kibbutz, one of the legions of enclosed, ideologically-driven (usually Marxist) Jewish communities that helped establish the State of Israel. To my right, the agricultural fields of local moshavim, semi-socialist Jewish towns which have also played a fundamental role in the life of the country. Beyond the farmlands are the wineries of a centuries-old French trappist monastery, and even further the mountains of the West Bank, speckled with ancient Palestinian towns and new Israeli settlements. And behind me, the world's only cooperative Jewish-Arab village.

Over 25 years ago Bruno Hussar, a half-Jewish Dominican priest who spent his youth in Egypt,[1] established an outpost of Israeli-Palestinian/Jewish-Christian-Muslim cooperation atop one of the highest peaks here, in the ancient al-Latrun region. His dream was to establish, amidst the ruins of Crusader castles, rusting husks of Israeli tanks, and the ghosts of Palestinian villages massacred and "evacuated"; in the bloody wars of 1948 and 1967, a sacred "Oasis of Peace."[2] At first only he and a few international volunteers lived here, in tents and fragile wooden huts, with no infrastructure, stricken by mosquitos and exposure, challenged by Satan at every turn with disease, obscurity and hopelessness. Then in the early 1980s the first Israeli and Palestinian families began to settle, a School for Peace was established, and slowly something miraculous appeared: a miniature binational society. You see, in all of Israel-Palestine there are many mixed cities and towns, but none are so by choice: from Hebron to Haifa, wherever Jews and Arabs can be found living together--almost always unhappily--it is because the unholy forces of nationalism, fanaticism and armed conflict thrusted them together. Today 50 families, 25 Israeli and 25 Palestinian, all citizens of Israel, now live upon the hilltop, and soon 90 more families shall join the community. The wilderness has been conquered; the mosquitos are gone, and the terrain is resplendent with green; and despite the immense difficulties generated by the ongoing Intifada, existence here is otherwise very ordinary, marked by all the peaks and pitfalls of normal middle-class First World life. The villagers have developed a web of friendships, rivalries and private traditions based more upon the everyday frictions, fancies and feelings common to small-town culture than the serpentine faultlines of the "Situation"--but because the vicious Conflict exists, a war in which two wounded peoples vie to carve up their shared land into two ethnocentric and ethnocrazed semi-states, it is this very mundaneness which makes Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salaam so revolutionary, so experimental.

Looking out over the vistas of al-Latrun, I see all around me the vigorous spirit of experimentation, of newness, the spirit of any young state such as Israel. Then I glance at Voltaire, who stabs at the earth with his tools, and I remember that the farmland around me was once Palestinian villages, and the youthfulness of the State of Israel was once the ancientness of Syria-Palestine. I suddenly recall last night: I was with the village's Palestinian workers, smoking the nargila, when word reached us that soldiers were in the village. Instantly the lights were shut off and I and one of the older workers snuck out to survey the scene as the others nervously peered through the doorway. The soldiers were only waiting for the bus to come get them, but their presence was enough to terrify my acquaintances. As we settled back down, I remember that I found myself also thinking that were I in a Tel Aviv cafe, the presence of a Palestinian in a heavy jacket would be enough to incite terror in the hearts of those around me, as well. Then, back in the present, atop the hill, the blizzard of memory suddenly fades, and I find lying in the snow of my consciousness an idea: today's Israel-Palestine is what America was, in the 19th Century, back in the days of the Frontier.

Click on "continue reading."

Thursday, 12 August 1899

The American Frontier was where the persecuted masses of Europe (Scottish, Puritan and then Catholic English, Irish) collided with the natives of an ancient continent, a land the newcomers claimed was "empty" and "undeveloped." This is Israel-Palestine, where another persecuted people of Europe (the Ashkenazim) have collided with a native population whose land they too declared "empty" and "undeveloped" (the old, pre-1948 Zionist slogan went, “Land without people for a people with no land.” Golda Meir, third Israeli Prime Minister, infamously remarked in 1969, “It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”)[3]

As in the case of America, the newcomers seek to "modernize" the land--huge rational agricultural projects, cities sprouting left and right--while their opponents, the indigents, seek to "preserve" the territory, or, recognizing that they have lost much of their old homeland, then fight to prevent "cultivation/corruption" in what remains.

As in the case of America, particular segments of the formerly persecuted Europeans rise to the top of the newly established regional socioeconomic ladder (New England Puritans and Southern Anglicans; Northern and Western European Ashkenazim) and send their former kinsmen (America's poor whites; the Eastern European Ashkenazim and the Sephardim) alongside new members of the underclass (Irish, Africans; Falashim and other Asian-African Jews) to die suppressing the natives' growing insurrection.[4]

As in the case of America, the natives resort to a dubious mix of armed freedom-fighting and terrorism (Geronimo; Yassir Arafat), even millenialism (the Ghost Dance; HAMAS' aims to establish an Islamist state in all of mandatory Palestine).[5] Moreover, as in America, the natives are being relegated to a bantustan existence (the "sovereign nations" of the Amerindian Reservations; Clinton and Sharon's proposed "Palestinian State," which is actually a hodgepodge of territories lacking control of their own resources and airspace).[6]

But also, as in America, there is a brave urge to experiment with new socioeconomic arrangements (the Massachusetts Commonwealth, the Oneidan Community, Nauvoo; the kibbutzim and moshavim, Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salaam), and a desire from all the peoples, newcomer and native, to be one with the land, to be rooted.

The Wild Mideast and a World-Wide-War

There are major exceptions to my comparisons.

Very importantly, Isreal does not have slaves, at least not in the classical senses.[7] While Palestinians, Bedouins, Sephardim and Falashim (as well as growing numbers of Thais, Fillipinos and Africans) serve as a cheap, indentured source of labor, Israel's economy is fundamentally dependent on American foreign aid and global Jewish donations. Ask any everyday Israeli and they will readily confess, "Were the US to end aid to us, we would vanish." In other words, Israel isn't getting a free ride to prosperity like America did (and for that matter, America didn't either: remember that little snaffu, the Civil War?) In point of fact, unlike the Amerindians, who were left to rot under the foot of American soldiers by the world and often by their own kindred, the Palestinians receive monetary aid from the European Union and global Palestinian, Christian and Muslim networks.

Unlike the case of the Europeans who flooded the shores of North America centuries ago, the Jews are not "newcomers" in the strictest sense of the word, being that this territory was theirs 2000 years ago, though conquered from and reluctantly shared with a number of gentile groups (take a gander at the Biblical books Judges, Kings and Chronicles, or look up the Apocrypha.)

Also, in Israel all Jews serve in the military, unlike in the days of the American Frontier (and today) usually only the optionless poor served, and if the rich took part, it was (and is) as the officer corps.

While there are those in Israel and the US who are trying to make this next fact otherwise, legally the West Bank and Gaza are occupied by Israel, not annexed as was the case of the vast territories that comprised the American Wild West. And while the Occupation is a martial endeavor to support the thoroughly worldly aims of politicians and zealots of the religious, nationalist and even economic variety--as was the case of Manifest Destiny in America--in the West Bank, the Occupation is in a much physically tinier geographic space than the American Wild West. Moreover, the Occupation is conducted with modern, deadlier and less-accident-prone weaponry--that is to say, many of the IDF's claims that so-and-so's death or the demolition of so-and-so's house were "accidental" are suspect on technological, not to mention professional, grounds.[8] While America's weaponry in the Wild West was cutting-edge, that did not mean America could have conquered the Wild West easily if it just decided to; take for example Custard's Last Stand and the Red Cloud War. In the case of Israel (which, ironically, receives most of its cutting-edge weaponry from America[9]), if the Jewish State decided to do so tomorrow, it could end the Intifada with a gigantic Wounded Knee Massacre by blitzkrieging or carpet-bombing the West Bank. Instead, because of the not-always-all-seeing eye of the international community, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has had to settle for a two-faced policy of transfer, ghettoization and colonization, a policy very much in the spirit of the merciless Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson, the US' great warrior of the Indian Wars and champion of the pre-Civil War Indian Removal Policy.

Yet, this leads me to an even greater difference between America's Wild West and Israel's Wild East: in the 19th Century, the world, most non-native Americans, and many Amerindians themselves, turned a blind eye to the what was happening beyond the Mississippi. However in Israel-Palestine, the world is paying attention. But how the world has done so is a much more complicated matter. As often as the world has tried to do right by the Jewish and the Arab peoples, it has also done wrong by both peoples. States and organizations have exploited the conflict for their own dubious ends: the Republican Party of the United States, for example, has used the "cause of Israel" to promote imperialist aims abroad and stifle dissent at home, while the Arab regimes have used the "cause of Palestine" to obscure their own domestic injustices. Moreover, the world has increasingly allowed itself to be perverted by the distorted perspectives that are sprouting from the violence: the fascist, imperialist and eschatological ideologies of Christian Zionism, ultra-Orthodox Judaism and al-Qaeda, and the regressive "progressive," violent "non-violent," globalized "anti-globalization" movements of neo-Marxism and neo-Anarchism, all have their propaganda roots firmly planted in the blood-drenched soil of the Holy Land.

Frontiers

It has been said that everyone considers his or her own turmoil as if in a dark cave, wherein all other people are but mere shadows on the walls, their trials and tribulations nonexistent. The Israelis and Palestinians have spent fifty years digging themselves such a pit, and since the start of the al-Aqsa Intifada, they have plunged themselves head first into the darkness. If the Conflict is a kind of dialogue, political polarization has rapidly reduced the vocabulary of peace on both sides in favor of a demagogy of absolute war. Sharon--instigator of the current uprising and, since the 1980s, the champion of the illegal Israeli settlements[10]--has vowed to impose a peace upon the Palestinians. His "peace" is in truth the ringing silence that follows a gunshot. He has sidelined Arafat and with him any form of binationalism, allowing the religious and nationalist fanaticisms of HAMAS, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade to fill the growing chasm of ideological legitimacy that has been widening in the minds of Palestinian youth. With each terrorist attack, the frightened and misinformed Israeli public--more and more of whom have served as soldiers of the Occupation, forced to oppress and even murder innocent Palestinians, and repress their own ethical instincts, for a shadowy imperialist agenda--becomes more racist and desperately bourgeoisie, surrenders more responsibility over to their prime minister, and looks away as he builds his incredible, illegal and immoral "security fence," a Hebrew Great Wall of China, which is devouring the most precious properties and resources of the West Bank as he prepares for apartheid and neverending war.[11]

It is no small wonder, then, that both Israelis and Palestinians irrationally insist that theirs is the greatest and most unique conflict of the 21st Century. Recently I met a young activist from Northern Ireland, who was touring experimental communities in Israel-Palestine. She was quite distressed: "I don't know if you know what I'm talking about," she said to me with a thick brogue, "but everywhere I go here it's like I'm looking at my own home. Of course there are big differences-I don't think we ever got this bad, this hot and violent-but at the heart of it, it seems to me like the same conflict, which means it probably is going to require a similar solution, similar conclusions..." She hesitated, then gushed: "But no one here wants to hear that! They get so angry and insist, 'No! You're just some stupid European! What's going on here is totally different! They"--Palestinians or Israelis--"are barbarians that can't be trusted!'"

I knew exactly what she meant. Increasingly, global Jewry and the worldwide Arab community see the Conflict as both absolutely unique and absolutely unsolvable, that is to say, only one side can and must "win." I remember when I was a student in the London University School of Oriental and African Studies, one day I got into a series of arguments with two Arab and Jewish students. My question to the Arab was, "Look, why can't the Intifada be fought with Gandhian methods?" to which he angrilly responded, "Gandhi only worked because the British were civilized. The Israelis aren't civilized. They bulldoze our homes, our families." I insisted and he retorted, "You don't understand. If you only understood the reality of the Occupation, you would know the truth." My question to the Jew was, "If Israel left the West Bank and Gaza, pulled back to the 1967 borders, would there not be peace?" She replied, "You're talking about retreat, negotiation. That can only work if your opponent is civilized. The Palestinians aren't civilized. They have their children blow themselves up to kill Israel's kids in nightclubs and markets." I insisted. Her exact choice of words was uncannily, unnervingly the same as the Arab's: "You don't understand. If you only understood the reality of the Situation, you would know the truth."

In a way, they are correct that there is something special about the Conflict. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the kamikaze attacks of September 11th, as a species we are awaking to the reality that we are living in an amazing, tumultous, dangerous era of new frontiers. Scientists, artists, activists, leaders and thinkers are trailblazing across heretofore hidden realms of possibility in religion, art, science, politics, economics and morality. The boundaries of human civilization are reaching once unimaginable new heights, with results both glorious--from the first steam engine to the Space Race to the Internet, from from the Bill of Rights to the global spread of democracy and humanism, from Jefferson to Gandhi to King to Chomsky to Taha and Rorty--and grotesque--Manifest Destiny, the French Revolution, the World Wars, the Cold War, the Viet Nam War, the Cultural Revolution, Third World poverty, AIDS, September 11th, Beslan-and all of these frontiers are violently converging upon one ancient terrain: Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho, Jenin, places as old as history, once the battlegrounds for polytheistic, monotheistic and doctrinal frontiers now long gone but whose expansions and clashes charted the course of human development for an eon.

Thus, the most obvious and I believe most pertinent correlation between the American Frontier and today's Israel-Palestine is this: it is an old yet new, and infinitely tragic war for stolen but sacred land, loved by two hurt and scared peoples--indeed, often lusted for and horded by each nation--and it is an even more tragic civil war of a shared and very human, timeless dream to find a place to call home. In the modern Holy Land, this dream that has been cleaved into two resentful, competing and almost irreconciable halves. This was the American Frontier, which was more than just a black marker line moving across a map drawn by business interests, zealots and berserker patriots, but was really the thunderstorm of human potential sweeping across the wilderness of existence, its black folds glistening with lightning bolts of ideas, stretching, expanding further and further. No wonder I can smell an electricity in the air...

---

Endnotes

Thanks to Rayek Rizak and Ariela Bairey Ben Ishay for their editorial assistance!

[1] Hussar, Bruno. When the Cloud Lifted... The Testimony of an Israeli Priest. Veritas Publications, 1989. In the first chapter, which takes place shortly after the 1967 War, Hussar writes, “Let me introduce myself: I am a Catholic priest, a Jew, an Israeli citizen, born in Egypt where I lived for eighteen years. I feel I have four selves: I really am a Christian and a priest, I really am a Jew, I really am an Israeli and if I don't feel I really am an Egyptian, I do at least feel very close to the Arabs whom I know and love. It isn’t easy, especially in the present circumstances, to hold on to these four selves within me. They are often at odds with one another and there’s a great temptation to identify with one of them and push the other three aside: to be the Israeli, relieved and elated by the recent victory [the 1967 War], forgetting the humiliation and suffering of the Arabs; or to be the Christian, tempted to look down in judgement from the heights, in the name of abstract principles, forgetting that I am also a Jew who lives events, and endures harsh ordeals. No! I must acknowledge all four selves. They are all good and God-given—though all badly flawed with impurities: selfishness, pride, bias, narrow-mindedness. The pain and purification that comes from the interplay of each of these selves must be accepted. And I feel torn like this (a horizontal gesture) and like this (a vertical gesture): that means living the mystery of the Cross.”
[2] Hussar, When the Clouds Lifted, chapter 14. Also: Feuerverger, Grace, Ph.D. Oasis of Dreams: Teaching and Learning Peace in a Jewish-Palestinian Village in Israel. RoutledgeFalmer, 2001, chapter 1. (Note: the village’s name comes from the Bible, Isaiah 32.18, “My people shall live in an oasis of peace,” “neve shalom” in Hebrew, “wahat as-salaam” in Arabic.)
[3] For an anti-imperialist perspective on this matter, read "Palestine: The Myth of the Empty Land" by Sue Boland on Green Left Weekly Online, http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2000/425/425p18.htm. There was a contradiction in the Zionist belief, of course. In his diaries, in 1895, Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism, wrote, “We shall try to spirit the penniless Arab population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country,” a tacit recognition of the presence of an indigenous population. Many Jews, in particular those part of the yishuv in Mandatory Palestine, and the gentile residents of the territory were also concerned about the genocidal implications of a Jewish colonial project. For instance here is one Yosef Diya al-Khalidi, Arab resident of Jerusalem, in a letter to Theodor Herzl dated March 1, 1899: "It is necessary, therefore, for the peace of the Jews in [the Ottoman Empire] that the Zionist Movement... stop... Good lord, the world is vast enough, there are still uninhabited countries where one could settle millions of poor Jews who may perhaps become happy there and one day constitute a nation... In the name of God, let Palestine be left in peace." This myth was also opposed, either tacitly or outrightly, by the binational Zionists. For more information on old and modern binational Zionism, check out these interesting articles and notes: Shavit, Ari. "No more two-state solution?" Ha'aretz, August 28th, 2003; Kotzin, Daniel P. "An Attempt to Americanize the Yishuv: Judah L. Magnes in Mandatory Palestine." Israel Studies, Volume 5, Number 1; and Khaldi, Kalam. "Cultural Zionism and the Binational State in Palestine."
[4] Bhaumik, Subir. "Mizo 'Jews' Seek Israel visas." BBC Online. December 23rd, 2003. See also: Tudor Parfitt’s works The Lost Tribes of Israel: The Hystory of a Myth. Phoenix (November 1st, 2003) and (with Emanuela Trevisan Semi) Judaising Movements: Studies in the Margins of Judaism in Modern Times. Curzon Press (April 2nd, 2002). According to Ori Sonnenschein, a life-long resident of Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salaam who currently works in the examinations division of the Israel Defense Forces (the office which determines who is given what assignments), it is not true, as it has been alleged by critics of the State of Israel, including myself, that “some Jews are more equal than other Jews” in regards to military assignments. The fact that a high percentage of Israeli soldiers in combat right now in the West Bank and Gaza are Sephardim is not due to intentional racism as it is truly due to institutional racism, a socioeconomic pattern knitted into the fabric of contemporary Israeli society. As with Blacks and Hispanics in the US, Sephardim more often than not live in conditions of poverty. In the US, minorites enter the voluntary military in the hopes of improving their financial conditions. In Israel, where military service is compulsary for all citizens, upon entrance into the military all conscripts are tested for various physical and mental aptitudes. Ashkenazim Jews, who have greater resources and thus better education, often score in ways that make them more suitable for noncombative assignments, such as intelligence, warehouse management, etc. Sephardim Jews, however, tend not to receive good education, and so are less skilled and intellectually cultivated, and thus more “suitable” for the gruntwork of combat duty. So, while American minorities and Israeli minorites might start from very different points of origin, ironically they end up in the same place: in the line of fire protecting the misguided interests of the rich and powerful. Sonnenschein had this also to say: “The problem isn't that the military is segregated. In fact, like in America, the military is a model of integration. But all the money we spend on trying to better integrate the military could be better spent elsewhere. The problem is that we even have a military at all: what has happened historically to require such a huge army? Why are we at war with our neighbors?”
[5] There is a bitter joke in the Gaza Strip: “A rich man had a dog who was unhappy where they lived in America, so the rich man moved to India, but the dog was still unhappy. Then he moved to Korea, but the dog was still unhappy. So he moved again, to Egypt, and the dog was not as unhappy, but still discontent. Then he moved to Gaza City, and the dog frollicked joyfully. The man asked it, ‘Why are you so happy?’ The dog replied, ‘Because here is the life for dogs!’”
[6] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and ReliefWeb; Foundation for Middle East Peace; GlobalSecurity.org. For a good article on the current Intifada and prospects for a binational solution, read Jeff Halpern’s The Key to Peace: Dismantling the Matrix of Control, located on the website of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
[7] Slavery is typically defined as a social institution defined by law and custom as the most absolute involuntary form of human servitude. The definitive characteristics of slaves are as follows: their labor or services are obtained through force; their physical beings are regarded as the property of another person, their owner; and they are entirely subject to their owner's will. Since earliest times slaves have been legally defined as things; therefore, they could, among other possibilities, be bought, sold, traded, given as a gift, or pledged for a debt by their owner, usually without any recourse to personal or legal objection or restraint. In my opinion, the situation of the West Bank Palestinians is more like a strangely system of indentured servitude similar to the exploitation of Mexican laborers in the United States, with elements of industrialized serfdom. And that’s the keyword: exploitation, the employment of a people’s labor in which the gain of the employer is ludricously and unjustly disproportionate to the the gain of the employee, both in hard monetary terms and in the more elusive, sublime category of spiritual satisfaction.
[8] Rabbi Gvirtz of ICAHD informed me that nowadays, Caterpillar bulldozers ride alongside IDF armored divisions in every mission, routine or special. According to ICAHD, during the Oslo period in the years 1993-2000, 700 Palestinian houses were demolished; in the four years of the al-Aqsa Intifada, over 5000 Palestinian houses have been destroyed. Givirtz put it well: “If you want to achieve peace, the process of expelling Palestinians from their homes must be stopped.”
[9] See this Federation of American Scientists summary. Also involved are Canada and Britain, and there is an unsettling nuclear connection with France (and this article.)
[10] According to ICAHD, before the Oslo period, 100,000 Israelis had illegally settled in Palestinian territories; during 1993-2000, there was a 100% increase, so that by the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifida, 200,000 settlers lived in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, using up over 50% of the land. “This is the basic reason for the second Intifada,” explained Rabbi Gvirtz, “the Palestinians couldn’t tolerate it anymore. All the rest—Arafat did this, Arafat did that—is political gossip.” Recently I took a tour of Bethlehem with the Wi`am Palestinian Center for Conflict Resolution and IFOR. The Wi`am guides took us to a spot where we could see the Har Homa settlement, a gargantuan complex of concrete highrises built on the peak of a bulldozed mountain. It has capacity for 60,000 Israelis (see my entry, “To Bethlehem and Back”.). James Bennet, in his August 15th, 2004, New York Times Magazine article "Sharon’s Wars,” writes, “For Palestinians, Oslo failed because Israel dragged its feet in ceding authority in the West Bank, while settlements there doubled in population to more than 200,000. For them, the Israeli offer in the Camp David talks of the summer of 2000 was a ploy, a stinting proposal to make Palestinians look rejectionist. (The Palestinian leadership, of course, obliged.) For Palestinians, Sharon detonated this uprising with the provocative visit he made on September 28th, 2000, in the company of hundreds of policemen and soldiers, to the [the Dome of the Rock.]” I should take a moment to note the collapse of Oslo from the Israeli perspective, which Bennet summarizes: “The Israeli version is, if anything, engraved more deeply: the Palestinians—the Arabs—never wanted peace. The conflict is not about Oslo, not about settlements, not even about the occupation that began in 1967. It is about any Jewish state in the region. To Israelis, Yasir Arafat walked away from Camp David because we wanted, and wants, to destroy Israel, not build a state beside it. Not only the suicide bombers but also the enduring chill of the quarter-century peace with Egypt undermined the premises of Israel’s left, enabling Sharon to seize the political center and, through constant maneuvering, to hold it.”
[11] Bennet writes in his article, “It may be that nations need illusions to make peace. It may be, indeed, that illusions are among the most precious things we have. But Sharon does not believe a Jewish state can afford them. Today, his story has become Israel’s story, and today’s Israel—with its won’t-be-fooled-again attitude about any warm peace with Arabs—is Sharon’s Israel... Now, as prime minister, he is building a barrier against West Bank Palestinians that is the single biggest change in the land since the Six-Day War. And he is trying to tear down some of the Israeli settlements he build in Gaza and the West Bank—something no Israeli prime minister has ever done. He is not doing this because he sees a path to imminent peace. Capitalizing on a White House that has chosen to view the world much as he does, he is trying to gird Israel for a conflict—not merely with Palestinians—whose end he cannot foresee... For Sharon and many Israelis, the wall that now separates Abu Dis on the West Bank from Jerusalem may be as much a mental barrier as a physical one. ‘What we really want is to turn our backs on the Arabs and never deal with them again,’ says one of the prime minister’s advisers.”

Schwartz - Kicking it back in Kufr Manda, non compos mentis in Nazareth, aching in Acre, hiking Haifa & nowhere in Negev--Quick update of my travels

I love Northern Israel-Palestine. It's a gorgeous land: succulent, lush fields, kibbutzim, ancient battlegrounds and bustling cities, vast yet traversible.

Four four days, October 27th-30th, I had a helluva trip. I went up north on Highway 6, passing the walled-in ghettos of Qalqiyah, Tulkarem and other Palestinian cities, to Kufr Manda, a small Palestinian village near Nazareth in the Lower Galilee. I hung out with Bedoins in Rumati el-Heib and Rumani, and Circassians in Kufr Kanna. Spent a day zooming about Nazareth (which was, sadly, not all that impressing a city, but the Basilica of the Annunciation was imposing and fascinating). Then hitch-hiked to Old Acre, an amazing little stone cube of history. Then taxi'd over to Haifa and spent all day at the Bahai Shrine and Gardens, which were astounding. You wouldn't even know that the Bahai Shrine was a modern building, it seems so ancient, and it is the perfect synthesis of cathedral and mosque.

Then I tried to take a train back to the Latrun region, ended up accidentally in Beer Sheva. Hung out with some security guards, who bragged about stealing from Arabs and killing HAMAS guerillas. One of them was Russian and the other a practicing Sepharadi Jew. Since I suspect that my own Jewish lineage may be Sepharadi and not Ashkenazi as my family believes, this was fascinating and important. I shall be looking for Sepharadi synagogues to learn more about their Judaism. I then hitched a ride with the train conductors on a lorry and zoomed up Highway 6 again. The Negev desert at night is a mystical wasteland. Whole swaths are as dark as the Atlantic at midnight, and if it weren't for the red haze of distant Gaza I would have believed somehow we had driven to the coast. I was dropped off in ancient Ramle, which now bears the indentured-labor-fueled "twin towers of Israel," a massive concrete factory that grinds Latrun granite into building material for Israel. Haggled and hung out with the taxi drivers, a motley but jolly bunch of Jews and Arabs, before I finally split a cab with a mad Israeli. The fellow was a member of the Golani commando unit back in the '73 War. With his own hands he murdered hundreds of Arab soldiers. He snapped (as he put it, "got spooked") when he saw the Syrians execute en masse a group of Israeli soldiers. My heart went out to him: he was a complete product of a military-industrial system, a system which exploited him... and then broke him. Sure, the State of Israel pays his medical bills--better than how the US treats its Viet Nam and 1st Gulf War vets--but it can never heal his spirit. The cab driver, a friend of the commando, told me that there were many Israeli soldiers who were like this fellow. War after war after war, what has it done to the Holy Land?

I was dropped off on Nachshon Junction, and hiked the last kilometer up the hill to Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salaam, armed with a stick to keep away the kanine and human jackals that prowl Latrun at night. The Moon glistened silvery above me, full and round like a 1922 Liberty half-dollar. Indeed, during my entire adventure across Israel-Palestine those four days, the Moon shone forth from behind chrome and navy blue clouds, queen of her dark domain, a beacon...

It has been an eye-opening journey. Perhaps I'll write a larger entry in the near future about it.

Click on continued reading for photographs

Kufr Manda

New Kufr Manda

Rumani, near Rumat el-Heib: me with two Bedouin dudes. The one all the way to my far right had an uncanny resemblence to Peter O'Toole.

Nazareth

Basilica of the Annunciation: one of a series of cultural re-depictions of the Mother Mary and child Jesus. This one is from Chile...

...and this one from China.

The Marina of Old Acre, with view of the Ottoman merchant market/fortress and clock tower, Ibn Pasha mosque and el-Jezzar mosque, with a church steeple in between.

Haifa: the Bahai Shrine to the Bab.