"End the Motherf*ckin' Occupation" note slipped into Western Wall! (reportback)

1st Reportback from NJ Activist in Palestine
by Junkyard 10:00pm Fri Aug 1 '03
abe-ismsupport [at] riseup.net

This is the first reportback from New Jersey activist Abe Greenhouse who is currently in Palestine.
INTIFADA DA VIDA

Aloha from East Jerusalem. Let me first apologize to those of you receiving this who are thinking "what the fuck, I haven't talked to this guy in years". Bottom line is, I still had your email addresses, and figured there was a chance you might be interested in hearing what I was up to.

For those of you who don't know, circumstances have evolved to the point that I find myself a 25-year-old Jewish activist dedicated to opposing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. I'm convinced that Israeli abuses of Palestinian human rights, both historical and current, of which some of you may not be aware, are the root cause of the violence which continues to claim so many innocent lives on both sides. I've been active in a number of groups working on these issues, most recently Central Jersey Jews Against the Occupation (http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~wsmith/jato).

Recently, I decided to put my body where my mouth was, and see for myself how people on both sides of the conflict live their daily lives. I spent the last ten days on the Birthright Israel tour, a free trip for Jews between 18 and 26 which takes you all over Israel, plus the occupied Golan Heights and East Jerusalem.

I've extended my return trip to a much later date so I'd be able to see the other (Palestinian) side of things, and I'm getting ready to embark on the next leg of my journey in the West Bank. After that, I plan to spend a week in Poland, visiting the various towns that my family left behind when they emmigrated to the US and elsewhere around the turn of the century. Much like the Palestinian refugees of 1947-48, I too have a homeland that I can't go back to, where virtually every trace of my culture and history has been deliberately wiped out. This whole series of trips is really a seminal event in my life, and I hope to come out of it with a much better sense of my own identity.

Anyhow, I left the States from Newark, where I was grilled for about twenty minutes by El-Al security, who asked me in about 15 different ways, "are you Jewish"? They also singled my digital camera out for a thorough examination, out of my sight in a little room. Once I arrived at the gate, the El Al official charged w/ letting people onto the plane took my boarding pass, and apparently noticed something about it that caused him pull the cloth tape across the gate, sealing off the aisle as he went and spoke inside the tarmac with another El Al person. He returned with her, and proceeded to look something up in a little green book, about an inch or two thick, held together with clips of some sort. Inside seemed to be a table of some sort, with various codes. This is what he seemed to be consulting when he noticed me attempting to read over his shoulder, which he responded to by moving the book so that the contents were no longer visible to me.

Eventually though, they let me on the plane, where I joined the rest of the Birthright crew. We had five staff members on the trip, assigned to forty participants, all but one of whom joined us only once we'd arrived in Israel. These included two medics (one armed w/ a Korean War-era American rifle), a
native Israeli tour guide, and a Canadian student from Concordia. The Canadian spent most of the trip telling jokes like "How do you stop an Arab from drowning? Get your foot off his head!", repeatedly refering to Arabs as "two-legged animals", getting drunk, and flirting with all the girls on the trip. The president of the travel agency arranging the trip is apparently very fond of this racist asshole - he's supposedly footing the bill to allow him to stay in Israel as long as he wants.

We saw all the standard tourist spots - Masada, Yad Vashem, Independence Hall, the Dead Sea, the Western Wall (where I inserted a note reading "End the motherfuckin' occupation!!!" into the cracks), and various kibbutzim near the Syrian and Lebanese borders. Our tour guide instructed us that East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights "belong to Israel", without noting that the annexation of these areas, occupied since 1967, was unilateral, and has only been recognized by one or two countries in the entire world.

At a later information session about various programs that would allow trip participants to return to Israel for internships, army service, or study, one of the organizations represented, the World Union of Jewish Students, distributed a brochure containing a map that made no distinction whatsoever between Israel "proper" and the West Bank and Gaza, widely assumed to be the focal points of the future Palestinian state. I recall hearing of several occasions in which pro-Israel activists have launched massive letter-writing campaigns after certain globe manufacturers labeled the area generally considered "Israel" as "Palestine", which was in fact the name of the area from 1917 to 1948, under British rule, as well as much earlier, under the Romans. What WUJS essentially did here is the same thing many right-wing Zionist extremists do - publicly claiming that the area commonly considered to be "Palestine" is in fact part of Israel.

For most of the trip, we had 6 Israeli soliders, about half of whom were armed with M-16 automatic assault rifles, embedded with the tour participants. The men (who numbered four) were a huge hit with the ladies, who seemed very turned
on by their uniforms and guns. Two of the soldiers, in jest, regularly threatened to shoot participants who annoyed them. One soldier let any participant who was interested pose for pictures while brandishing his machine gun. The soldiers bragged that Israel buys them from the US for only $1 apiece.
We were later to tour an air force base, where participants were enouraged to pose in the cockpits of various non-functional Israel fighter planes. All in all, I can think of at least three seperate occasions in which
participants were encouraged to pose for photos with weapons.

Another feature of the trip were the (no exagerration) seven or eight different shopping malls they took us to. American consumer culture, consisting of McDonalds and the Gap, was on display everywhere. One mall in particular, at the Azraeli Center in downtown Tel Aviv, had eight stories plus a basement level - an image seemingly taken right out of Dante's Inferno.

We were also taken to an Israeli dance club, where all the music seemed to have been taken from the soundtrack to that Saturday Night Live bit about the two geeky guys that go clubbing all the time. The one redeeming quality of the
place was that the drinks were all paid for by the tour organizers, and drunkeness made the experience somewhat more bearable. We were generally encouraged to drink alot, while simulataneous being greatly deprived of sleep (we woke up as early as four AM, and got to bed as late at three or four). This combination probably helped nudge most of the participants into a fairly suggestible state - perfect for the various lectures we were obliged to attend.

The lectures focused on making several essential points. We were repeatedly told that the entire world despised the Jews, and that the only people we could ever trust were each other. We were told that "the war in Iraq has been very good for Israel - and what's good for Israel is good for you". Also, we were repeatedly warned never to publicly express anything less than total agreement with every aspect of Israeli policy - "keep it in the family", we were instructed. Speaking of which, we were also warned of the horrors of intermarriage.

Finally, there were political lectures, in which the entire blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was placed squarely on the Palestinians. The lecturer, who gives such talks professionally, as well as training anti-Palestinian activists for various Zionist organizations, didn't even
pretend to be remotely objective. We visited Yad Vashem, where some of the exhibits literally moved me to tears, having recently learned that I lost had lost more family to the Nazi death camps than previously thought. Our visit was
capped by a religious memorial service for the 6,000,000 victims which, incongruously and disturbingly, was concluded by singing the Israeli national anthem. In this manner, a false connection was made between repecting the memory
of the third of our population that was brutally slaughtered earlier in this century, and a very specific political identification with the State of Israel. We were also asked to sing the anthem, "HaTikva", at another point in the trip,
in the context of a converation about Judaism. Again, a false connection was made - this time, between the Jewish religion, and the political ideology of Jewish nationalism
and supremacy/hegemony over Israel/Palestine.

Although I found myself having very different political opinions from the bulk of the group, and was certainly in disagreement with the opinions we were encouraged to adopt by the tour organizers, the trip wasn't all bad.

Israeli beer turned out to be better than I'd anticipated, and much time was spent relaxing at beach. I felt guilty having a good time as Palestinians in the Occupied Territories were dying (a young boy and his two sisters were shot by an Israeli soldier, with one death and two severe injuries resulting), but I was glad that I got the opportunity to see life on the inside of the Green Line, where people seem generally oblivious the the wholesale
oppression that goes on in the territories.

There was a lot of emphasis in the trip on the diversity of Israel's people, and we met with members of the Druze and Bedouin communities along with Israeli Jews. The Druze we met told us that the Druze community "has a different opinion
about the Palestinian issue than most Israelis", and that they have two representatives in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset - both members of Likud, Israel's dominant, ruling right-wing party. Israel's largest minority, the
Palestinians, were completely left out of diversity discussion, aside from being referred to as "two-legged animals" by Birthright staff.

Anyhow, I'm soon to be heading off into the occupied West Bank, where I expect to bear witness to a very different reality from the Norman Rockwell-like picture of Israel that was painted for us by the tour organizers.

Expect more updates soon, and by all means, feel free to ask me questions, by emailing abe-ismsupport [at] riseup.net. There's a strong likelihood that it will take me a good while to respond, but I promise that I'll get around to it eventually. Meanwhile, if anyone wants to be removed
from this mailing list, just say the word, and it will be done. I'll be getting a cell phone very shortly, and will be posting the number as well, for people to call if they're so inclined.

Thanks for reading, and I promise that my future reportbacks will be something closer to the order of 4 or 5 paragraphs - I just didn't have access to email for a long time, and had to cover a ton of stuff in this one message. Apologies
for not sending out many personal messages, even to my friends - it's just really difficult and time-consuming, and I hope you'll understand. Thanks again!

Abe Greenhouse
Occupied East Jerusalem
July 31st, 2003 - 9:45 PM local time