Today marks one year since the start of Hineinu—the sustained solidarity project in the South Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank which I participated in. On this anniversary, I am looking at my photos from this intense three-month period—a period of accompanying shepherds threatened by settler and army violence, of new friendships, of despair and resurgent hope.
Yesterday, my friend Sally, whom I met through the project, called me. Though Sally and I have only known each other for a relatively short while, when we talk it’s like catching up with an old friend. We check in. How’s your wife? How’s your girlfriend? How’s work? Then—remember what we did? How are you? Still have nightmares? Still hearing attack helicopters overhead?
I imagine that our experience is a bit like that of soldiers from the same platoon or whatever connecting again after they who come back from war. Their loved ones are there for them, but no one really understands what it is they went through. Only a daily basis, everything is fine, more or less, but in the quiet of a Sunday afternoon, listening to Leonard Cohen while the dog is splayed on the couch, sleeping, you randomly get teary-eyed. The person who you were on that last day in the south, running from those soldiers chasing you and a Palestinian shepherd friend because you were supposedly in a closed military zone, taps you on the shoulder. He is looking weepy too. “I’m still here,” he says.
When I talk to Sally, or any of my Hineinu friends, those memories come out from behind a locked door, and it’s a relief.
I can’t exactly say that I’m glad that I did Hineinu, because it hurt. And yet I’m grateful for the friends that I made. And I’m grateful for the experience, because it helped me grow. But it hurt.
I suppose, like war—which is what it is down there, in the south, war—we need people to do the fighting, even though we know that the fighting is traumatizing. So I’m glad that there is a new Hineinu cohort starting up right now and that they are continuing the nonviolent struggle against the brutal Israeli occupation. I just hope that the new participants go into the project with open eyes. They can’t avoid the cuts and bruises, but maybe if they anticipate them, they will be a little less shocked than I was.
No, that’s not possible, actually. It’s shocking either way.