Brushing Feathers: Letters to a human (Part II)
Summarizing all the information I have acquired during these months of study on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not an easy task. But I am going to focus on what I have learned from the interviews I have done with six people, three Israelis and three American Jews, with ideologies ranging from anarchism to the extreme right; Another source that has helped me a lot to introduce me to Israeli society is the newspaper Haaretz, more or less left-wing, which I chose because, looking for articles on the Internet, I came across the name of Eva Illouz, an author I love and who happens to be French-Israeli. Because of her, I subscribed to the newspaper and read all her articles. The podcast “Unapologetic”, recommended to me by one of the interviewees, is about a Palestinian woman and a Palestinian man living in Israel who are trying to find a third narrative outside of the “two sides”. They are young and passionate and, besides telling you about their experiences as Palestinians in Israel, they also interview Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, the Druze, who are a minority ethnic group in Israel, Israeli Jews, etc. In addition I have seen films, documentaries, YouTube interviews, lectures, debates and endless public opinions from both sides, which I will not be able to share them all, as there came a point when I stopped copying them into my reference list.
At first I focused mostly on the Israelis, as the conflict is with them and empathizing with the Palestinians is easy and obvious to me. Whenever I listened to them I had a strange feeling, which I finally figured out what it was: this conflict is said to be impossible to understand and solve, and the reason why this myth has become so big is because, still today, the vast majority of Israelis do not know the whole truth about the history of their country. The strange feeling I had came from the fact that everything I heard from them completely omitted the Palestinian perspective. A real solution can never happen if the whole truth is not known. So the next step was to buy two books: “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe and “Gaza in Crisis” by Ilan Pappe and Noam Chomsky.
With these two books I confirmed my suspicion and what I am going to try to do now is to start a dialogue with the Israeli rhetoric (so common in mainstream media in the West) applying the history and perspective of the Palestinians, because if we want to reach peace, we have to listen to the voices of the other and start an exercise of empathy, which is about time to be addressed.
To the Israelis:
(An exercise in empathy with the Palestinians)
One of the things that is important to mention before I begin to tell the story that is omitted in Israel, is to talk about the term “Zionism”. In one of my first interviews with an Israeli, thanks to her I realized that the relationship I have with the term is not the same as the Israelis have. And it seems very obvious, but understanding this is fundamental to the exercise of empathy that both non-Israelis and Israelis have to do. For an Israeli, Zionism means that which has given them a home to return to. The meaning of the word is basically a Jewish state. And for those of us who are anti-Zionists, Zionism means that project that has been destroying Palestine for decades through ethnic cleansing, collective punishment and, now, genocide in Gaza. Therefore, I think it is important to point out some differences: The first is that the Idea of “Zionism” (a country for Jews to live in peace and dignity, free of anti-Semitism) is not the same as the Execution of the Zionist Project, a project that has been achieved through illegal occupations, the destruction of entire villages of the “native” population, -as the Zionists themselves used to say-, and the expulsion of these through the typical cruelties, massacres and humiliations that every settler country has practiced. The second difference that I want to emphasize (and that I do not know if it is true at all but I think it can be beneficial to reach an agreement) is that, although Israel is the result of the Zionist project, it is not the same as Zionism. Today Israel is home to several generations of Israelis. Our fellow Israelis were all born there, and it is neither realistic nor fair to want them to become homeless again. If this were the case, we should ask ourselves whether or not it would be an anti-Semitic act and also, whether it would be a collective punishment. The third difference is that Israel and its policies are not the same as Israelis. Netanyahu does not represent, today, the majority of Israelis and he, like other Zionist leaders in history, have manipulated and exploited the pain of his people in such ways, that if it were up to me, they should be convicted of extreme psychological abuse.
Having said all that, here I go with some hidden history:
““My readers have a generic idea about the history of colonization in other countries. The native populations, civilized or uncivilized, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, regardless of whether they were civilized or savages. And it made no difference whether the settlers behaved decently or not. The Pilgrim Fathers, the first real pioneers of North America, were people of the highest morality who meant no harm to anyone, least of all the Red Indians. And they sincerely believed that there was room enough on the prairies for both the pale-faced and the red-skinned. Yet the native population fought just as fiercely against the good settlers as against the bad ones. The same is true of the Arabs. We should tell them whatever we want to tell them about the innocence of our targets. Water them down and sweep them with honeyed words to make them more palatable, but they know as well as we do what they don’t want. They feel at least the same instinctive jealous love for Palestine that the ancient Aztecs felt for ancient Mexico and the Sioux for their rolling prairies.”
The Iron Wall (1923) by Ze’ev Jabotinsky”
The Zionist project was always very clear from the beginning. This excerpt from the essay “The Iron Wall”, by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, is a clear example of how they did not hide as much as they do now in using terms like “natives” and “colonization”. To him we owe the slogan “from the river to the sea”, by the way.
All maps of Eretz Israel, the name by which religious Jews call the land of Palestine, always went from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. These religious people believe in the return of the messiah in the promised land. In the scriptures it is said that at the end of time, the Messiah will return to tell the Jews that they have done their job well. The problem is that the Zionist project has used this belief to advance the conquest of the promised land. In other words, they secularized Judaism. This is why Orthodox Jews, who dedicate themselves to the study of the Old Testament, were and are anti-Zionists. Herzl, who had the idea of Zionism in the 1880's, did not care much about where to locate the Jewish State, but at his death, in 1904, they almost unanimously decided to execute it in Palestine. The first Jewish immigrants arrived in 1882, and it was thought that there was no native population, since one of the most deeply rooted myths in the Israeli consciousness is that Palestine was a land without people for the people without a land.
Until 1918, Palestine belonged to the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire and, during those years - where more and more Jewish immigrants were arriving - some Palestinian nobles and intellectuals became alarmed and informed the Ottomans that: “The Jews intend to create a state that includes Palestine, Syria and Iraq”. But at the time most did not see this as a problem, as Jews represented only 5% of the population.
Some European societies saw potential in the project, such as Protestant missionaries and British colonists. In Christianity there is a branch that also believes in the return of the Messiah, but in their scriptures it says that the Jews will realize how much they have screwed up and that is why they will convert to Christianity, thus transforming the Promised Land into a Christian Palestine. The Christian Zionists - who also exist today, especially in the USA and some Latin American countries, and who, together with the Zionist lobbyists, have an enormous influence on policies - took the opportunity (the British) to help colonize Palestine.
The British Prime Minister in World War I, Lloyd George, who made comments like “these Mohammedans must go” took advantage of this politico-religious strategy and, in 1917, Lord Balfour promised the Zionists a Jewish State in Palestine, thus condemning both the Zionists and the Palestinians to an eternal war (since all the options they proposed never took into account the demands of the indigenous population). In 1918 Britain conquered Palestine, always treating it as a state - contrary to what is thought about Palestine at that time. The myth that the Palestinians were savages and uneducated, apart from being the typical stereotype that racist colonists have always said, is not true. Palestine would have become a state, whether or not the Zionists had arrived.The Palestinians had a connection to the land for hundreds of years and, from the 1920s onwards, they were a booming society, importing and exporting goods from Asia, Africa and Europe. They had schools, beautiful sacred mosques (most of them destroyed today), lively markets, political leaders and a remarkable culture. In 1920 there were already hundreds of deaths on both sides, until in 1928 the Palestinians decided to accept the parity proposed by the British which favored the Zionists so much (the Palestinians being 90% of the population) so that they could start from somewhere and begin to negotiate. But the Zionists decided to reject it, which led to a revolt. In London, the labor party wanted to support the Palestinians, but the Zionist lobby pushed for a return to the Balfourian track. This led to another revolt in 1936, where the Palestinian leaders were exiled and the guerrillas disbanded. This made it much easier for the ethnic cleansing, which began in December 1947 and ended in January 1949 (with six more massacres), known as the Nakba, or the great catastrophe.
Between 1930 and 1940, the Zionist national project was enlarged thanks to the creation of the Hagana ('defense' in Hebrew and future Israeli Defense Forces), recommended by the British officer Orde Charles Wingate because, according to him, it was obvious that the Palestinians were going to resist, but in addition, they should protect the Jewish settlers; and the creation of the archives of the Villages, a set of topographical photographs of the terrain, both of the streets and of the villages, the sources of quality water, the fertile lands, a list of names of the inhabitants of the villages, who participated in the resistances, who killed Jews, etc. In order to complete these archives, they took advantage of the natural hospitality of the Palestinians, who opened their doors and fed them. Just as the indigenous people in the Americas did with the European colonists.
These two creations were fundamental for the execution of Plan Dalet, which is basically the endless massacres and expulsions they committed against the indigenous population, once they kicked out the British and proclaimed themselves an independent state in 1948. David Ben Gurion was the architect of the plan, along with other names such as Youssef Weitz, Yigal Allon, Yigael Yadin, Stern Gang, etc.
To continue defending that the Zionist project was always to create a country free of the indigenous population, here are some phrases that these characters said in the Consultancy or in their personal diaries:
While Ben Gurion said publicly that the Jews in Israel were suffering a “second Holocaust”, in his personal diary he wrote: “the Arabs are [militarily] very poorly trained. And if we don't provoke them they will remain inactive and the neighboring Arab countries will stop sending volunteers.”
The term “aggressive defense” was then invented in order to provoke the reaction of the Palestinians, and thus justify the massacres during the Nakba.
Yossef Weitz : “ transfer serves not only one purpose - to reduce the Arab population - but also to evict the lands cultivated by the Arabs, so that the Jewish colonists will have a land free of Arabs. The only solution is to transfer the Arabs to neighboring countries. We must not leave any village or tribe behind.”
Yigal Allon “We have to go for a series of collective punishments even if there are children living in the [attacked] houses.” “A cry for peace would be weakness” “You have to blow up twenty houses and kill as many inhabitants as possible” “ If we accuse a family, we must attack them without mercy, women and children included. Otherwise, this would not be an effective reaction. During the operation there is no need to distinguish between guilty and not guilty”.
Yigael Yadin: “We should explain to our commanders that we have the upper hand...we should paralyze the Arabs' transportation and their economy, harass them in their towns and cities and demoralize them”.
Yadin recommended dropping the term “retaliation” and instead said, “We were wrong to only implement retaliation. What we need is to install in the troops the idea that 'aggression' is the modus operandi from now on.”
Stern gang: “destroy Arab neighborhoods and punish Arab peoples.”
These phrases remind us of the current Israeli defense minister calling Palestinians “human animals” and leaving them to die of hunger and thirst, disease and heat, while the IDF has already killed more than 34,500 civilians, 70% of them women and children. The Nakba continues in Gaza, home where Nakba refugees were “lucky” enough to settle and thus escape the eternal condition of refugees. Everything the Israelis fear, the Palestinians have been suffering for 76 years.
The IRO (International Refugee Organization), which helped Jewish refugees after World War II, after the Holocaust, was intentionally kept out of the picture by Israel and the international Zionist leaders, so that no one could make any association between the Holocaust and the Nakba.
The OIR proposed repatriation as the first option to the problem of the Palestinian refugees, but this was unthinkable for Israel, because even today they still need a Jewish majority and the whole Eretz Israel for the Zionist project to be fulfilled to the end.
That is how in 1950 the UNRWA was created, the current NGO that takes care of the Palestinian refugees and the same one that Israel is preventing, by all possible means, to access in Gaza with food, water, medicine and everything necessary for a human being to survive.
It doesn't matter if you think it's not comparable. The terror that your ancestors felt in the Holocaust, is the same exact terror that the Gazans are living nowadays. The fact that Israel is composed of Holocaust victims does not absolve it from becoming a genocidal state. I’m talking about Israel, not the Israelis.
Conclusion:
Thinking that Israel is just the US's puppet-in-waiting, apart from taking away the Israelis' ability to act, also excuses Israel from the actions it is taking on its own. Israel is its own entity, as is every other country in the world. It is true that the US is a very powerful ally, that it depends on Israel and that Israel depends on the US for the exchange of technology, weapons, information, intelligence, etc. But to say that the settler is only the US, I don't think that is true. You also have to remember the sinister interests of Christian Zionists- as are Trump and Milei (well, now Milei says he is Jewish) - who work side by side with governments. I’m not sure of what their goals are, but I don't know if those who want all Jews to convert to Christianity are very good future allies for Israelis. Sometimes I imagine Trump self-proclaiming himself the Messiah, riding on a donkey, in Jerusalem. The perfect narcissist's dream.
What I want to express is that I think we are constantly being tricked into believing that I (because I am against how the Zionist project is being executed) am an anti-Semite and an enemy of any Israeli. Anyone who falls into that trap is part of the game of the “two sides” divide that I have been criticized so much by the Israelis I have interviewed. The trap that the anti-Zionist immediately becomes an anti-Semite is a kind of propaganda that prevents dialogue. That is why we have the feeling, those of us who are not from Israel, that Israeli society is very intolerant. Because intolerance comes from not wanting to listen other narratives. And the Palestinian narrative is that the Zionist project is a settler project, like any other.
But when one realizes that in Israel they are not told the truth about their own history (as it also happens in settler countries like Spain, France, USA, etc), that everybody criticizes them because we are watching the first globally-witnesed live in real-time genocide in history and the truth can no longer be hidden and, moreover, that their own rulers have used the REAL generational pain of the Holocaust to manipulate them and justify the brutality of the IDF, then one begins to understand that Israelis are also victims. And I sympathize. And I am sorry if I ever made any comment that hurt you.
I don't know what the solution is, but maybe it has to do with letting go of the idea of a purely Jewish state. Letting go of the Zionist project - which does not mean leaving Israel. And letting go of defensiveness to practice courage, which lies in showing vulnerability and holding each other's hands. To believe more in people and less in governments. Give ourselves the opportunity to know how to forgive and to be forgiven. After all, Jews, Christians and Arabs have come to live together in peace in many parts of the world, especially in Arab countries. (For references, read Avi Shlaim)
I think it is relevant to mention that five of the six people I interviewed are women. Emotional intelligence is a muscle that can be worked, just like love. And today, if there is something to hold on to, it is that intimacy that is shared when someone reaches out to you. The women and the man I interviewed understood that, and it was beautiful. To ask rather than attack. Seeing instead of judging. To be compassionate instead of hating. Enemies are built to feed the ego and ambition of those who have lost faith in themselves. And that is why I do not trust in majorities, nor in projects that need manipulation to be achieved. And I suppose that is why there is so much need for a Messiah, because the Messiah brings the word of God, and we are, poor little us, so lacking in our own God.
The Palestine-Israel conflict is a reflection of everything else. When one sees that opinion on this conflict is divided between indigenous people, black and colored people, leftists, environmentalists and queer people vs. religious fundamentalists who want Jews to convert to Christianity, fascists like Milei, Abascal, Netanyahu and Trump, and multinationals like Google and Tesla (Elon fucking Musk), one realizes that this goes far beyond the conflict in the Middle East and that it can be fought wherever you are. It is a struggle against global fascism, against colonization and neo-colonization. It is a fight against racism, against classism and against the dictatorship of technology. It is a war against what is called “progress”. Progress, for whom? It is a war against hunger, against thirst, against ecocide. It is a war between those of us who want to recover our spirit and those who constantly take it away from us. It is a war against destructive capitalism and against patriarchal values, which lead us so fast, to the most dastardly hatred. To hatred, because we are easily frightened, because we have been hurt so much and so deeply. To hatred, because instead of opening our chests, we shoot a bullet into the other's chest so that the reflection in which I see myself breaks. To hatred, because it is so painfully superficial, to dehumanize us... To hatred, because we have lost ourselves in something that has been meaningless for a very long time now.
And this is why the last question I asked the people I interviewed was the same one I ask us here and now, along with other pertinent questions: What makes us humanxs? How can we remember what it means to be humanx? What does it mean to be a humanx in this life? What do we practice every day to stay humanx? How do we not forget to be humanxs, once we are humanxs? What or who steals the humanx we carry inside us?
It was beautiful to realize that deep inside ourselves, we have the answer. We must get there. We just have to.
Like love, which is a practice, being human is a practice too. Remembering what we have come here for is more urgent than ever.
To continue the dialogue,
thetrimmerstribe@gmail.com
