A Very Personal Commemoration

by Edna Homa Hunt

June marks an anniversary for the Palestinian people: 30 years of occupation or, more accurately, of war. A war by the leaders of the Zionist enterprise to annihalateor at least severely weakenthe Palestinian people, who, in the Zionist view, have had the temerity to live on the land Zionists covet for themselves alone.

From where I stand, several events of this slice of time have special poignancy. I make no claim to a dispassionate perspective. What I feel is intensely personal, colored by anger, disillusion and feelings of betrayal and shame.

Inevitably the image of Jerusalem forces itself into my mind's eye; "Israel consumes Jerusalem, piece by peace" proclaims a headline on the cover of Challenge, a Jerusalem magazine.

As a native of Jerusalem—of five generations' standing—I cannot relinquish my vested interest in the character of the city, past, present and future. Nor can I set aside my earlier rootsgoing back to my Jewish family's connections with Palestine within the Ottoman Empire. My paternal grandparents were among the first inhabitants of Rishon-Le-Zion, while my maternal grandparents settled in Petach-Tikvaboth among the earliest Jewish towns established toward the end of the 19th century.

I grew up in a pluralistic and polyglot society. My childhood playmates in Talbieh, Theo and Yasmin, were the children of our Arab landlord and his German wife.

To my great dismay, Israel has been transformed into a ghetto, purified of anyone but Jews, with carefully marginalized labor pools of Arab and imported workers—tolerated only because they serve as "hewers of wood and drawers of water." This spectacle repels and angers me.

At one time I was dazzled by the rhetoric and achievements of the Six-Day War. But sometime after the 1973 war, my disenchantment set in with aspects of my countrymen which I could never have imagined.

During annual visits I began to confront and absorb many ugly truths. And when I walked around some Palestinian refugee camps, no media campaign could explain away what my senses took in!

As I supplemented the visits with intensive reading of news in Hebrew (the American media were, and still are, worse than useless), the images of the war being conducted against the Palestinian people on their own land and in and around their own homes, grew in horror.

I have been continuously struck by the teeth-grinding viciousness exhibited by Israeli authorities, from prime minister to foot-soldier. Yitzhak Rabin ordered legs and arms of Palestinian men and boys to be broken. Soldiers employed bulldozers to bury men alive. Or they "amused" themselves by tying wounded men to moving vehicles and dragging them through streets.

I remember my horror, and shame, at the photo of a Palestinian woman in her 90s, in slippers, being dragged by a bunch of young Israeli soldiers from her home for immediate deportation to Jordan on some pretext of "improper" residency status! How could these young men do that? Didn't they have grandmothers? Weren't their "orders" of the kind that the Nuremberg trials required to be disobeyed?

Shabak interrogators used a High Court-sanctioned repertoire of tortures to break bodies and spirits. I saw one such broken young man being carried by his father into the offices of the Israeli Physicians for Human Rights for a medical examination. How can I forget that?

And then there is the case involving Shabak operatives who summarily, on the side of the road, executed "terrorist" prisoners captured after they had attacked a bus. This occurred in the state that proclaimed itself "the only democracy in the Middle East." What was omitted was that it was a democracy for Jews only!

Nothing other than wanton malevolence could possibly explain the uprooting of thousandsif not tens of thousands of olive trees. Many were very ancient and surely bore witness to precious history, both public and familial.

In an area of the world where every living blade of green counts for so much, and cultivation was fraught with so much sweat, toil and malaria, how could the very people who dedicated an annual holiday to planting trees use bulldozers to tear up trees by their roots?

And the people who had tended them and whose families had lived from their fruit for generations could only watch in numb pain as the exposed roots evoked the gaping mouths of wounded animals no longer able to scream. The image of such a graveyard will long endure.

What inhumanity dictates the policy of blowing up homes or boarding up major portions of them, when it is abundantly evident that these cruel reprisals against families have no deterrent effect on alleged "terrorism." To the contrary: destruction of a family home only intensifies the fury. And what is the lesson when the home of mass murderer Dr. Baruch Goldstein remains untouched because he was Jewish and his victims were Muslims, and his grave becomes a shrine to honor his act?

That these 30 years have been a time of ever-intensifying war is undeniable. From the 1967 beginnings of the occupation, all aspects of Israeli governance, administration and control were infused with ferocious animosity.

Hundreds of laws governed every aspect of public and private life, even what vegetables could be planted in the kitchen garden or trees in the front yard. And, worst of all, months of curfew were imposed and every educational institution was closed, with even home-schooling prohibited.

The purpose of the increasing cruelties throughout the 30 years was to humiliate and abuseto ensure that Palestinians would know with absolute certainty "who is the master around here"! In Hebrew the phrase "to fully penetrate into someone's life" conveys the sense that pervaded actors, actions and events.

The means were copied from the experiences of World War IIand every war before it, and carried out with haughty self-righteousness, dismissive of all criticism. Only the late Professor Yisha'ya'hu Leibowitz dared to criticize the perpetrators publicly as "Jewish Nazis." A few others whispered the same opinion. But the vast majority of Israelis consented with their silence. They still do. Where did this happen before?

Studies in contrasts are the intensive involvement since 1967 of American Jews (specifically, the organized parts of the Jewish communities) in the affairs of Israel, while most American Christians and Muslims distanced themselves from the plight of their Palestinian brethren.

Over the period of this war, I found myself seething with anger at both phenomena. The interference of American Jews on behalf of the predatory actions of the Israeli government is well documented in Israel. That the role of their Jewish fellow citizens is so little known to the majority of Americans is in large measure due to the dereliction of their duty by the American media. By now the media fear of the Jewish lobby has created a chilling restraint. To understand why, ask any journalist who has had "contact" with the Jewish news-vigilantes of CAMERA.

But the interference goes much further into the heart of U.S. foreign policy. (For a wide-ranging analysis I suggest the just-published book Open Secrets by Prof. Israel Shahak, published by Pluto Press and available from the AETBook Club.)

An infuriating example occurred during a recent visit by one of countless U.S. Jewish "delegations" to the intended building site of the Jewish Har Homa settlement at Jabal Abu Ghneim, on the southeastern fringe of Jerusalem. There chairman Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations asserted his delegation's support of any Jewish building in Jerusalem, adding: "We leave the timing to the Israeli government." This, regardless of the fact that the lands are Palestinian and are located in the Bethlehem district of the West Bank.

Nothing whatsoevernot even the reminder by Taleb As-Sana'ah, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, about the agreement at Oslo to maintain the status quo around Jerusalem pending a final settlement, deterred Hoenlein's flat statement that "Jerusalem is not tied to the Oslo agreements."

What unmitigated gall! Another reminder of "who is the master around here", and in lots of other places!

A Sharp Contrast

In sharp contrast, I have noted with dismay the retreat of most Arab countries from significant and direct involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; certainly not in politically meaningful ways and not in ways that will help Palestinian people.

Observing what has happened to the Palestinians in the years since the misnamed "peace process" got underway, I find myself vacillating between scorn for their leader and pity for his followers. The people are hapless victims with nowhere to turn and no one to rely on for help. How could they have predicted that the man who symbolized their national resistance and spearheaded the revolt for liberation from their occupier would surrender to that very occupier and his overseas patron?

No one has written more eloquently about the predicament of the Palestinian people since the Oslo agreements and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority than Prof. Edward Said. I feel profoundly unequal to the task of even attempting a parallel critique.

That is as it should be. He is the authority for analyzing the situation of his people and challenging them, while I am competent to scrutinize and judge my people.

Few people outside Israel recognize the central role of ideology, mainly the conjunction of Jewish religious orthodoxy and nationalism, in shaping Israel's policies and actions toward "others," most particularly the Arab people. Indeed, our attention in the West is intentionally diverted to the threat of Muslim "fundamentalism."

In Israel, not all people respond to each and every ideological strand underpinning the state's policies. But there are "true believers" who proclaim their faith to inspire others to action. Take the belief held by some that the Redemption (for the Jews, when the true Messiah comes) will bring about the building of the Temple, as expressed in this Jan. 31 letter to Kol Ha'ir in Jerusalem by Itzchak Bar'rabbi Moshe Ha'Cohen:

"How will our Temple be built while the Nation of Ishmael still exists? Is it not what we pray for three times a day? The continued existence of Ishmael is delaying our Redemption. When the Lord God will annihilate Ishmael, we will be able to offer perpetual sacrifice and God's Indwelling Presence (the "Sh'china") will arise from its dust. May this be fulfilled soon, in our lifetime."

There are those in power in contemporary Israel who really believe this!

Buttressed by its nationalist-religious ideology, Israel has been emboldened over these 30 years by its increasing military and political success to dream of empire! To accomplish that, Israelas many times in the pastsought and found a patron. This time its patron is the superpower of them all. In exchange, Israel offers any service, from training death-squads to laundering drug money. But let no one make a mistake about Israel's ultimate goal: to serve itself, and become the preponderant power in all of Western Asia. Then not only the Palestinians will be vassals.

Arrival of the 30th anniversary of Israel's war against the Palestinians does not mean the hostilities are winding down. I feel certain that this war will continue and the balance of destruction, loss and pain will fall on the Palestinian people. I do not dare to contemplate the horrendous human consequences for several generations of what the Israelis are, and will be, handing out.

My personal alienation from my origins and what might be called my heritage is complete. And yet, my humanity denies me the permission to turn away.