Friday 28 September 2007

Teenage memories...

Whilst preparing for the conference, I tried to get hold of some books I remembered reading as a teenager that were about the situation in Israel/Palestine. One was set during the Six Day War and its sequal was set in 1992. I couldn't find them (couldn't remember the titles for one thing!) but memories of the books kept coming back to me whilst I was there.


A couple of weeks ago I found the first book in the Oxfam bookshop near work (it's an absolute mecca for book lovers & only 2 days later I got the brand new edition of Holy Land, Unholy War for £2.50!). Then I found the sequel online, and finished it this morning.


The author, Lynne Reid Banks, is more well-known for her landmark novel The L-Shaped Room and her children's series The Indian in the Cupboard, but has also written a few books about Israel. Between 1962 and 1971 she lived in Israel, spending some time teaching on a kibbutz, and this has clearly had an impact upon her work.


One More River (1973, revised 1992) chronicles the life of Lesley as her parents decide to emigrate from Canada to Israel and end up living on a kibbutz in the months leading up to the 1967 war. Broken Bridge (1992) returns to the same characters and their children, and explores the effect that the death of one of the children (at the hands of a Palestinian) has on the family and the community.


In both books, the traditional Israeli ideas about Arabs are challenged. Lesley makes friends with an Arab boy across the river (in Jordan) from the kibbutz and this has a lasting impact on her life. In the second book the adult Lesley is fluent in Arabic and works for an organisation highlighting humanitarian issues faced by the Palestinian community. Returned soldiers share their feelings about the conflict and teenagers' views are challenged.


In Broken Bridge there is a moving scene where the grandfather (whose choice it was to emigrate in the first book) is talking to his grandson about the conlict and the role that Israeli soldiers have had to play in it:


"It's what I'm always saying, Nimrodi, I've been saying it for 25 years. It's the cursed Occupation. You can't have a nice, kindly, humane occupation of one people by another. Never, not in history, not in this world. You can't liberate land, as the right wingers called it when our forces won that miraculous victory in 1967. There were a million people on that 'liberated land'. The people weren't liberated. They were conquered." [Broken Bridge, p. 218]


The historical setting is well researched and essential to the story, so they are a really good introduction to the conflict for young people. Both books have a glossary of Arabic and Hebrew terms used as well as detailed maps. Her other novels set in Israel explore similar themes - An End to Running and Children at the Gate.

Thursday 13 September 2007

England Vs Israel - Euro 2008

For some unknown reason, Israel is counted as "European" as far as football's concerned. (It's also eligible for the Eurovision Song Contest, but that's a whole other issue.) For Euro 2008, it's in the same group as England and on September 8th the 2 sides met at Wembley.

The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign organised a vigil for 2 hours before kick-off, with the theme of "Fair play for Palestinians - Kick Israeli apartheid out of football". I went along with Greg - a fellow Sabeel-er - in our first Palestinian protest since coming back from the conference.
I felt a general sense of unease about the vigil, despite believing that it was a very important thing to do. On the way there, I wore my Sabeel t-shirt over my Women in Black shirt (which has "End the Occupation" in Hebrew, Arabic & English on it). The protestors were well protected, kept behind two security fences and a line of police, on Olympic Way - the road leading up to the new stadium.

The reaction of the Israeli fans didn't surpise me. It was much the same as the reactions
we saw whilst standing with Women in Black in Jerusalem. Some swore and made gestures; others took the flyers and tore them up; some said we were fascists and racists. What did surprise me was the reaction of the England fans. I'm not sure quite what I expected, but some of it shocked me.

Some took the flyers, were interested and clapped to show their support.

Others simply ignored us.

A few yelled that politics should be kept out of football. (An interesting point...)

Some told us to "go back home" - not sure if they thought we were all Palestinians, or whether they just wanted us out of Wembley. Quite a few showed their ignorance (true to form for England thugs) yelling that we'd got the wrong country - that England were playing Israel NOT Palestine!

One guy even told us that he'd support our cause once his children had a council house. Not entirely sure what his point was...

The most supreme irony was that whilst the Israelis were calling us racist, there were some England fans (not many, but noticable) who'd found a source of what seemed to be joke Orthodox hats - with fake ringlets attached! This insensitivity and ignorance was just ridiculous. Wembley's in the middle of one of the largest concentrations of Orthodox Jews in Europe - and this is how the English behave...

All in all, I was pleased to have gone. It was good to meet others who shared a passion for the cause and to share with them our experiences. But, it wasn't the best way to educate the fans - we weren't allowed to talk to them, only give out flyers. Nonetheless it was important to show Palestinian presence at the match.

More info and photos can be
found here.

Monday 3 September 2007

A t-shirt and a long discussion

I brought a t-shirt back from Palestine for a friend of mine. Nothing too political, just a navy t-shirt with "Palestine" in English & Arabic and a picture of a tree. Someone at the conference had bought an identical one, and I liked the look of it. (It was also ridiculously cheap, but that's another story...)

For some reason I didn't get round to giving it to him until last week. Mainly because it had been at the bottom of a pile of junk on my bedroom floor. He was pleased, but was worried about whether it was safe to wear it on the streets of London. I told him not to worry, and that it would be fine - he just probably shouldn't wear it if he was ever in Golders Green. (An area with a large Jewish community in north London.)

On Saturday I went round to his house & he was wearing it. He mentioned that he had felt a little uncomfortable wearing it in public, and we ended up having a long discussion about the whole Israel-Palestine thing. Admittedly, I had bought him the t-shirt so that I could recruit him to the cause (so to speak!) and to provoke a discussion, but the reality was rather hard work.

He doesn't know much of the history and did have an Israeli flatmate for over 2 years (who lost a friend in a suicide bombing during that time), so didn't really have an opinion on the conflict. What he did say was that he didn't want to take sides because it was politics and he didn't want to get into it. The bottom line, according to him, was that there needed to be peace but that at the same time this would be nearly impossible because of the hatred felt between the two groups and the huge amount of re-education that was needed. We spent ages talking about the land issue. He kept saying "but if you took the land out of it, then what?" - I tried to explain that you couldn't take the land out of it, because that's what it always boils down to! My biggest point was that what I want is justice - as well as peace. As a Christian himself, he ought to recognise just how important that is. What I saw with my own eyes was a people being oppressed because of their race. That's unjust and needs to stop.

Don't get me wrong, he didn't disagree with how I feel, he just doesn't feel able to take sides and doesn't like the fact that the conflict is so political and there's no clear way out of it. Interestingly, this was the first time I'd really talked to him about the trip - despite the fact that he lives round the corner & I see him all the time. For some reason I just hadn't been able to put it into words, possibly because he's so close to me it was just easier not to. But as our discussion wore on, the emotions I felt when I was there came back.
- The times when the situation seemed helpless, when there were no straight-forward answers.
- The futility of day to day life of Palestinians.
- The endless stories of the loss of land and homes.

I tried to explain that by some miracle not all these people are full of hatred. That on the Israeli side many people just have no idea what's going on. That suicide bombers are a tiny minority on both sides. But it's so hard to be coherent and explain a situation that defies explanation.
I'm glad we had the discussion and broken the ice on the topic. I'm not going to hassle him about it, he's entitled to his opinion and in many ways it's right not to take sides - but so difficult. Interestingly, we watched To Kill a Mockingbird last night, which brought up the topic of racism and segregation again, so there will be more opportunities for discussion. And for me at least it was a chance to talk through the massive frustrations of the whole situation.