I hung out for most of the day on my own, and then Muhammed and I walked around Ramallah a bit to look for an Arabic cell phone for Samer. I found him a good one - thanks for your help, Muhammed! I miss Samer so much, so it is with bittersweet feelings that I think of leaving this place in a few days. I am sad to go, especially before the playgrounds get installed. But I am also so excited to finally see him on Friday! It still feels like too far away...
After buying the cell phone, Muhammed and I headed over for a delicious dinner with Kathy and her friend Raja, who we had met last Wednesday. Kathy is an awesome cook and an interesting companion. We talked for hours about the politics of Zionism and strategies for resisting it. I had a lot of fun with them!
One thing we talked about was what constitutes resistance. We all agreed that when Palestinians choose to stay here this choice is, in itself, an act of resistance against Zionism, since Zionism explicitly aims to push the Palestinians off of this land so that the land will be for Jews only. That said, I have been thinking a lot about what kinds of choices I would make if I were a Palestinian living in the West Bank, as it is a hard life here. In the 10 days I have been here, I have encountered numerous Palestinians who have expressed a desire to leave. Just the other day, Muhammed and I were hanging out and, out of nowhere, he sighed and said, "Oh, I wish I could leave this prison." And I have been approached by friends of friends here about helping them to go study in or immigrate to the U.S. One friend of Shaher's asked me if I could offer him an acceptance to a university in the U.S. He didn't know which one, and he didn't care. I felt so awful to have to tell him that I had no power to accept him to any university, but I did try to give him some tips on how to start finding an appropriate university and putting together an application. Many people here want to leave, and I can't blame them. But I wish it was different. I wish life wasn't so hard, and I wish Zionism wasn't so successful. I can't expect Palestinians to want to stick it out here, to want to resist by staying and coordinating anti-Zionist movements, but I hope for the sake of what's left of Palestine that enough people will continue to do so.
It is so strange to be here in the West Bank, just a few hours' drive from Gaza, and to know the terribleness of what is happening there. I just read this article in the Toronto Star (which, I believe, is typically a pretty Zionist newspaper - Canadians, help me out here): http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/326309
In it, there is a quote:
James Reilly, professor of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the U of T [University of Toronto], sums it up this way:
"The operative assumption on the part of Palestinians is that the Israelis have inflicted so much pain on us that they deserve whatever violence we can inflict on them.
"The operative assumption on the part of Israelis is that if we hit the Palestinians hard enough and often enough, they will agree to peace on our terms."
How true this is. And peace on Israeli terms means a continued occupation of Palestinian lands and the continued oppression of Palestinian people.
In this vein, I want to share with you all that I was reading one comment in particular on a blog post from a few days ago, and I was very upset, so upset that I was ready to throw this poor computer through the window of this internet cafe. I have struggled with how to deal with this, because it was written by one of my family members (from the Jewish side of my family). I found it outright hateful and racist - it was essentially a justification for the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. I have trouble understanding how people can convince themselves that Israel is acting in self-defense and with restraint. And then I go back to slavery in the U.S., colonialism in Africa and North and South America, the Holocaust in Europe, apartheid in South Africa, and every other example of the racist domination of one group by another since the advent of race and capitalism. In every one of these examples, members of the dominant group were somehow able to convince themselves that what they were doing was right and "Godly", that any loss of life or abdication of freedom on the part of the oppressed group was merely necessary in order to maintain the natural order of things. And somebody will have to sacrifice, right? I held myself back from saying this a few days ago, because I felt worried about alienating people I know. Now I will say it. People who think of themselves as progressive, as anti-racist, as humanitarian and humane, are tricking themselves the second they support Zionism. How can the world take seriously their desire to fight against the oppression of, say, Black people if they cannot extend the same analysis to all examples of racist oppression?
I think that's enough for today. I'm starting to get all worked up. Now I'm off to Jerusalem, where I plan to do a bit of tourism and try to pick up some books for Susie. Tomorrow it's Bethlehem in the morning, and possibly Haifa in the afternoon/evening. I plan to be back in Ramallah by Wednesday, though, because I really want to attend a lecture about parallels between South Africa and Palestine at the Friends Center that night.
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