![[Skip to Page Content]](graphics/skip_sliver.jpg){kind=small}
|
       |
 
 |
Epiphany at Beit Jala
In the 1970s there were still a number of Israelis with concentration camp tattoos on their arms. These fading blue numbers on slack and wrinkled skin were vivid reminders of the horrors of the holocaust. An evening with a holocaust survivor—or sometimes even an impromptu conversation over coffee—was an eerie journey through mankind's cruelty and his soaring spirit. Surely no place in the world contained so dense an accumulation of the raw experience of man's struggle and suffering. Yet, as my tour extended into years, I could not ignore a disturbing blindness in some of even the most gentle Israelis. They did not seem to see the Palestinians all around them. Nor did they seem to see the degradation and injustice imposed on them by Israeli rule. In general, this was just as well because when most Israelis did notice Palestinians their reaction to them was one of loathing or fear that quickly could escalate into violence. I had not seen such an instinctive hatred of another people since living among Southerners many years earlier. "Filthy Arab" was the routine and most printable description uttered by Israelis. Mindless and violent attacks against Palestinians were not rare, particularly in flashpoints like the West Bank city of Hebron. Palestinians were forcefully kept out of Jewish areas after nightfall, facing arrest and worse if they were caught on the street, and there was no question of any of them being welcomed in restaurants, hotels or other public facilities. Their access to decent jobs was almost nonexistent, except at the lowest levels as farm hands, construction workers and trash collectors. Their cars were issued license plates of a different color than Israelis, and their identity cards clearly marked them as not being Israelis. These were ironic reminders of the yellow stars Nazis forced Jews to wear so they could be differentiated from other Germans. I had trouble giving credence to such blind prejudice because it seemed to me almost unthinkable that a people who had suffered so much could be so unfeeling toward another people. No doubt that was why it took me so long to recognize the reality around me. It was many months before the daily witness of my eyes and ears began to work its way into my consciousness. In the end, and with all the goodwill in the world toward Israelis, there was no escaping the brutal reality that Palestinians were treated like a lesser form of humanity, to put it mildly. Although their housing was insufficient and overcrowded, Palestinians were strictly denied housing in Jewish areas. At the same time, some of the most desirable homes in Jerusalem and elsewhere that were originally Palestinian now were occupied by Israelis. The enormity of the displacement of the Palestinians hit me one night while I was having dinner with an Israeli couple I was especially fond of. Theirs was a saga that would have been from a story book almost anywhere else. She was a German Jew incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp and he was an Israeli from Austria serving with the British forces who liberated the camp. He returned for her after the war and they took up married life in Israel. They were among the most charming and sophisticated couples I had ever met. And she was one of the best cooks, so an offer of dinner at their house, conveniently located near the center of Jerusalem, was always welcome. At one point, over an after dinner brandy before flames of olive wood in the fireplace, she remarked that, of course, the house had originally been Palestinian. She said it without the slightest shred of compassion, this woman who herself had suffered so much. True, after what she and her family had been through, the loss of a home was not the worst fate. Yet there was not the least hint of sympathy or guilt, or even irony, about the fact that immigrants from Europe were now living in the home of Palestinians, a people who had had nothing at all to do with the Nazi holocaust. I was still mesmerized enough by the heroic version of Israel's history not to challenge my hosts. But the seed had been planted. I began to wonder: What right, really, did European Jews have to Palestinian homes or, for that matter, to Palestine itself? Was this conflict about two people with an equal right fighting for the same land, as the Zionist slogan had it, or a premeditated scheme by foreign immigrants to displace the legitimate local majority population? It was thus by fits and starts, between long periods of numbness, that I slowly became aware of the Palestinian dimension of the conflict. As time passed and the new U.S.-Israeli relationship settled into a state of intimacy, I made it my business to get around the occupied territories more, meeting Palestinians and glimpsing life through their eyes. My interest doubled with the arrival in the White House of President Jimmy Carter, who became the first—and only—president to call Jewish settlements illegal and speak out on Palestinian rights. This greater exposure to the Palestinians did not lead me to any sudden revelations. A large part of the reason is that it was so difficult to grasp what was really going on in the occupied territories. This was because it was almost impossible to determine who was telling the truth between two bitter enemies. While some Palestinians angrily complained about the cruelty of the occupation, Israeli officials insisted with great sincerity and persuasiveness that the occupation was as humane as it could be.
Next Page
|
 |
Special Reports:
|
Printer Friendly Version of this Article