At the moment that I was leaving Palestine/Israel for the first time, I knew that I needed to come back. Riding the bus from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv on the way to the airport, listening to Neil Young, and surveying the clusters of houses in between the large, fecund fields, I felt an odd and unexpected sense of loss. What had made me feel so attached to this place, a world away from the suburbs of Detroit where I grew up? What did it mean that I had plunged headlong into the struggle against Israel’s brutal military occupation and regime of racial segregation between the River and the Sea? What would become of the relationships that I had forged with my friends and comrades in this struggle? Would we, scattered throughout the lands of the so-called Diaspora, stay in touch? Would we ever return to the place that we affectionately referred to only as “the Land” (ha’aretz in Hebrew) to wage nonviolence again?
Four years later, here I am, typing on my MacBook Pro in my new home in Asheville, North Carolina, preparing to travel to Palestine/Israel once again and rejoin the grassroots Palestinian-led anti-occupation resistance movement. I will be going as a participant in Hineinu, a three-month-long sustained solidarity program in the South Hebron Hills region of the occupied West Bank sponsored by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. As CJNV describes on the program webpage:
[participants] will work with Palestinian activists to highlight their stories and experiences living and resisting under occupation, serving to further amplify partners’ voices. As a part of a network of activists and organizations, Hineinu activists will support legal, media, and archival efforts to resist the ongoing displacement and violence targeted at Palestinian communities in the South Hebron Hills. Over the course of the program, participants will build relationships that will expand and strengthen CJNV’s working network of solidarity and coresistance.1
COVID pending, I will be arriving in Palestine/Israel in late January and staying until mid May. Besides time on the front- and back-end of the program, and occasional weekend trips to other parts of the country, I will be living and volunteering entirely in this rural and remote area of the occupied West Bank, which has become a frontline in the battle between the Israeli settler-colonial project and Palestinian resistance.
The South Hebron Hills is in Area C of the West Bank, meaning that it is under full Israeli control. As the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem explains on its website, “Israel’s policy there threatens the continued existence of some thirty Palestinian villages. The region, part of which is also known as Masafer Yatta… is home to approximately 4,000 people most of whom earn their living as farmers and shepherds.” They explain that Israel uses a few tools to prode the Palestinian denizens out of the area, including preventing Palestinian construction—no new cisterns, roads, schools, houses—limiting their access to water—no new water pipes, no connection to the Israeli national water company which serves the nearby Jewish-only settlements—and tacitly supporting the settlers in their attacks on Palestinian life and property. With its team of Israeli and Palestinian researchers,B’Tselem provides ample documentation detailing the practices of the occupying Israel military in addition to expert legal analysis. I rely on B’Tselem for much of my orientation here.2
Over the course of Hineinu, I will be documenting this steady but slow-moving Israeli assault as well as the Palestinian resistance by publishing one “note from the field” every other week. With photography, audio recordings, and the written word, I hope to reveal to you the lived experiences of the Palestinian people who have been forced by the fortunes of outrageous circumstance to defend their homes, their families, and, indeed, their nation. As a Jewish person, I am also especially interested in the efforts of allies and accomplices to Palestinians who come from the nation most directly responsible for their oppression (i.e., Am Yisrael, or the Jewish people).
I do not hide that I enter into this project with some preconceived notions. I consider certain controversial issues to be matters of settled fact. Though I welcome disagreement, I challenge everyone to deal with real documentary evidence—not just cold facts and statistics, but also the personal stories of those most impacted. In this place, the deep narratives that people tell themselves involve historic, sometimes trans-historic, themes and currents. We have to deal with those ideological structures, while simultaneously digging down deep in the muck of current events and planting a lamppost for anchoring our inter-generational minds.
While there are many valid ways to intellectually frame the situation in Israel/Palestine, I insist on using the term ethnic cleansing to denote the policy which Israel is pursuing, and has pursued, in many parts of the country. If one cares to read my annotated bibliography on the subject, I would invite data-driven responses from all.3
Already I am aware that the terminology and the basic premises that I’ve thrown out will provoke questions and counterpoints. For example, “Palestine/Israel” looks weird typed on the page, even to those like me who use the term frequently. It deserves some unpacking. The claim that the Jewish people writ large (i.e., not just the Jewish Israeli polity but world Jewry as some kind of coherent “nation”) bears responsibility for the Israeli occupation requires further elucidation. But, here at this moment, when we’re just beginning, I simply wish to extend the invitation to you all to join me on this strange trip—to read and thereby participate with me in this transformative social movement for equality, democracy, and justice. To paraphrase Robert Frost, I promise that they will not find us changed from them they knew—only more sure of all we thought was true.4
See https://www.btselem.org/south_hebron_hills
This annotated bibliography, which I created as a part of my master’s in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, remains unpublished. However, I will make it available upon request. The manuscript deals with the question of defining ethnic cleansing under international law as well as data and argumentation for and against the charge viz. the State of Israel.
Frost, Robert, “Into My Own,” A Boy’s Will (1915). Accessed online 12/25/2021 via: https://shenandoahliterary.org/blog/2012/01/into-my-own-by-robert-frost/