Memorial Day II: Independence Day/Nakba Day

An art installation: "What's Nakba?"

A few days ago, it was Independence Day in Israel.

I had an entire post prewritten in advance ready to share with you about independence day in Israel--I've described this moment in the past to friends as the microcosm of the entire conflict. On this one day, two narratives collide and clash. Israelis celebrate the glory of their struggle and fight to establish an independent nation-state and home for the Jewish people. For Palestinians, it is a day marked as the beginning of the end. Called al-Nakba or The Catastrophe; the Israeli Declaration of Independence announced a return to a land for one people, and an expulsion of another people from that same land. Over 700,000 Palestinians fled, or were expelled during the events of the war.

Prepared as I thought I was, the actual experience of Independence Day in Israel was more than I expected; I was overwhelmed, and what I had written no longer felt adequate. 

The silence of the morning memorials and the poignant remembrance of lives lost to this conflict was suddenly interrupted at sundown by massive patriotic partying. The nationalism of the people around me struck me as offensive. The manipulation of  our powerful feelings of grief towards political  and nationalistic ends was frightening. 

I was in the city center of Jerusalem as this shift took place. Bars had set up large screens to display Israeli television  broadcasts of the Independence Day programming, replete with hundreds dancing the hora in pulsating concentric circles and Air Force flyovers. I walked home, basically fleeing, from the commotion and the crowds who were amassing to drink and celebrate and smack each other with balloon blow up hammers covered with Israeli flags. The full 360-degree shift from a nation in mourning to a nation in celebration left my head spinning.

I had spoken with my great-aunt earlier that day. She moved to Israel with her husband in 1953 as part of a  group that established a kibbutz in the Negev desert. One of the original Jewish pioneers, she came here with an ideological dream. We talked about the impact of memorial day,  of the six graves in the kibbutz cemetery of soldiers who had died in various operations and wars, dating all the way to 1948.

She told me how pleased she was to see so many generations come to the memorial that morning to pay their respects. I asked her what she thought of the fact that Independence Day celebrations were so close to the Memorial Day silences, she told me that that is the only way to live here. We have to celebrate and live our lives fiercely for those who died for us, she told me.

I then spoke with my mom, who lived in Israel during the 1970s-1980s. In 10th grade, she was living on a Kibbutz up north and I asked her, what was Independence Day like for you then? She told me it was a barbecue, and there was Israeli dancing, a big bonfire, everyone was outside on the lawn and was wearing their nice, white shirts. At age 15, she was mostly concerned with where her friends were. It was a big party. Then she got quiet; we didn't know about what else was going on then, she tells me. Or what would happen next. 

I recently watched the film Khirbet Khizeh, based off a book written by a soldier in 1949 of the events of the War of 1948. In the film, produced in 1978, a troop of  young Israeli soldiers takes over a Palestinian village and kicks out the inhabitants.  The book is translated into English and worth reading. The film takes place at a simple, almost slow pace--boredom and heat determine the soldier’s actions more than politics or ethnic superiority. The film toys with the irony of the creation of a new community of refugees in the name of giving a home to Jewish refugees from Europe. I was haunted by shots of the houses left abandoned, kitchen counters still covered with food for tomorrow's meal, pictures hanging on the wall; by the few sentences stated by the soldiers that could have been said yesterday. The parallels were left lingering in the room long after the film ended. I was left with the notion that what started in 1948 still isn’t finished; Palestinians are still being forced out of their homes via evictions and demolitions. It's still not over, and any attempt to live a life of normalcy here is forever underlined by the consequences of 1948.

If you're interested in the history of the conflict and the War of 1948, check out the best history of Palestine and Israel that I have yet come across,  A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel by German scholar Gudrun Krämer. She focuses on the collision of Zionism and Palestinian Nationalism in the beginning of the 20th century, the historical context leading to those interactions, and the complex ways in which "social grievances were intertwined with national aspirations." Well worth the read.

I lift my glass today, not to celebrate the end of the War of Independence, but rather to a fight that is not yet over. To the struggle that hopes to end with both a safe-home for the Jewish people and a home that honors the dignity of the Palestinian people. Call me naively optimistic, but if we don't linger in a world with slight traces of optimism, what else do we have left?

Memorial Day

From the "Monument to Future Victims of the Conflict" 

April 21, 2015

It is Israeli Memorial Day. Flags have appeared everywhere seemingly overnight. The music on the radio has shifted to a slow and somber mood. You hear it the moment you step onto the bus where the bus driver nods to you with an air of equal solemnity. 

At 8pm, we were driving. A siren sounded, and 5 women with roots in America and various connections to this place got out of the car. We stood on the side of the road in silence and camaraderie. The seconds passed. We got back in the car; we kept driving. 

Everyone has lost someone here due to the conflict(s) and wars. Whether it is a young soldier who died this summer, November 2012, Lebanon, Sinai, Yom Kippur, or a friend or family member who was blown up on a bus, in a restaurant, on a street corner. Someone stabbed or attacked randomly. Everyone here has someone. Today the national trauma is worn on the sleeves of every Jewish Israeli. 

Israel recognizes 116 soldiers and civilians who died this year.

They're not alone in mourning.  2,314 Palestinians died in Gaza this summer, and 58 in the West Bank this year. This is not including the thousands injured, displaced, or imprisoned.  The UN released a report that said the Palestinian death toll in 2014 was the highest ever since 1967. You can read the report here.

Tonight, to commemorate these lives, we attended an alternative memorial ceremony hosted by the Combatants for Peace and the Bereaved Family Forum. The event is unique. It was the 10th year that they brought together Palestinians and Jews to share different stories of loss and to call for an end to the cycle of violence. We heard from a Palestinian woman who's father was shot and killed randomly by a settler. We heard from an Israeli who's brother committed suicide while serving in the army. We heard from a Palestinian man who's 10 year old daughter was shot by a soldier outside her school. And an Israeli mother shared her story of losing her son while he served in Lebanon. It was moving to sit in this hall, filled with people who also chose to memorialize this day differently. 

I told a young Israeli whom I know that I was going to this ceremony. She is self-proclaimed to be the most rational, secular person. She was raised in Jerusalem by an American mother who immigrated to Israel and works with an organization fostering relations between Palestinian and Israeli kids in Jerusalem. And yet. She told me that this day, this one day is too much to bear to also include dialogue. Today is a memorial for her friends; it's overwhelming enough as it is, she can't hold onto both stories at the same time. I hadn't thought of that until she shared it with me. 

She is going to Mount Herzl for the ceremony that takes place at the military cemetery. She told me that every year, she sees more friends standing there, mourning someone that they lost. And each year, they get younger. It never ends, she said. It just continues, the cemetery keeps growing. 

It is for that reason that I believe that alternative events like tonight are essential: to create a place to lay all grief on the table, to be vulnerable and remember together. To find humanness in each other, even in our worst moments. This is the only way to stop the graves from multiplying each year. To prevent the pain held by those left standing, to bring an end to the never-ending list of names that echo when the siren sounds.  

Remembrance

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April 16, 2015

Today is known as Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Day, in Israel. An entire 24 hours each year is designated to the commemoration and remembrance of the 6 million Jews in Europe who were killed. 

At 10 am, a siren sounds. People stop everything they are doing around the country for 2 minutes of silence. 

I stood at the junction of East and West Jerusalem this morning. My camera poised, my framing already picked out, waiting. 

An Arab bus breezed past, and then. A siren. Cars pulled over. People got out. Stood. Silent. A taxi drove past. 

Silence. 

And then it was over. People returned to their cars, put it in gear, and drove off. Returning to the original programming. 

Yet in that moment, the three seconds between the ending of the siren and the return to life, I felt the weight of a people. An object at rest stays at rest. An object at motion stays at motion. And that moment between rest and motion takes all the energy in the world to begin. The experience was moving in the sense that I was able to concretely see a collective, national consciousness being built. To know that all over the country, at the same time, strangers that you do not know also took 2 minutes to be quiet and to think of "over there" and "that time" in Europe. To reconcile he deaths of millions with your present daily existence in a country that was constructed on the identity for which they were killed. 

It is powerful. 

I sat with a friend of mine afterwards to talk about what we just watched. What we felt. What we thought. Our conversation turned to this last summer and the operation in Gaza. To other sirens we heard, to our experiences of sitting in shelters, to our experiences when we shrugged it off, to those without shelters. We spoke of Sheijaya, a neighborhood that has become a symbol of the destruction of Gaza this summer. My eyes watered, my throat grew tight. 

We remembered. 

The holocaust has evolved into being more than just an event--it is a symbol that can be politicized, banalized, contorted to political justifications, used to demonize your enemies, the punchline in a morbid joke, the justification for contemporary anxieties. 

As much as I wanted to approach and experience this moment this morning with these critical thoughts in mind, it hit me in the heart. And to give a minute to think of the horrors of the world felt not only appropriate, but called for. To remember. To be called upon never to forget. And for me personally, to remember the determination to strive for justice and ensure that it is never again for any peoples. 

The next two weeks are a microcosm of this conflict wrapped up in official commemorations and ceremonies celebrating or condoning Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Naqba. Stay tuned. 

To see a video of the siren, see here.

Elections

March 16, 2015 

Elections are upon us. Polls open tomorrow at 7am, close at 9pm. Results begin to come in at 10pm tomorrow. The battle is being fought until the end: tonight in a move to court Bayt HaYehudi voters, Netanyahu officially stated that he is against the establishment of a Palestinian State. Herzog and Livni also dropped a political plot twist and announced that while they said that they would rotate the Prime Ministership in 2 years, they will no longer rotate. This is a huge deal; I know from many conversations that many people on the left were hesitant to vote for their united left-center party if Livni was the PM. Meanwhile the Joint-Arab Party has changed the face of politics here; if they manage to convince enough Palestinians to vote instead of boycott the election, they could have upwards of 14 seats in the Knesset. And the Haredi women party is pushing for acknowledgement of women's rights within the religious communities.

If this sounds complicated to you, just know, it's a soap opera here. Dramas play out, lovers are crossed, and someone wakes up from a coma.

But it's so much more than that. This little place garners so much attention worldwide and the decision of a vote impacts so many lives. Especially the lives of Palestinians living in the territories under military law who are not eligible to vote. (The biggest contradiction being the Palestinians who work in the printing shop that prepared the materials for the ballots for tomorrow who are themselves unable to vote.) Gaza has barely been mentioned at all during the campaign cycle, this summer was swept under a rug. Israelis are more concerned with economic redistribution and the expensive cost of living here, yet the mainstream conversation barely touches the grim realities of occupation or the connection between high food prices in grocery stores to the subsidization of settlements. According to +972 mag, 60% of Israelis polled believe that there will be no progress on the peace process regardless of who forms the next government, "because there is no solution to the disputes between the two sides."

Yet, there are some fireball politicians. Notably Stav Shafir, 29 year old and 2nd seat on the Labor party's list. She made a name for herself as part of the social movement protests in the summer of 2011. But I noticed her after she made this incredible speech during an impromptu session of the Knesset. 

She called out the right and their financial corruption, ideological corruption, and perversion of political ideals. She'll be assured a seat tomorrow in the next session of Knesset. And for that, I'm grateful. I'll be voting tomorrow for the first time, let's hope that the results leads to something changing.