Palestine

Will local go global?

The Independent asked candidates we profiled two additional questions: “Will you (or won’t you) use your position as a platform to discuss international affairs, specifically Palestine and Israel?” and “If so, can you provide a brief explanation of your perspective on the subject?” (image from Wikipedia)

Civic politics generally deals with maintaining roads and sewers, reviewing development applications and a vast range of close-to-the-ground issues. But municipal politics has also been a place where a vast range of other issues are discussed. For example, Vancouver city council voted in 1983 to declare the city a “nuclear weapons free zone” and, formally or informally, members of council have felt free to address topics of national and global concern.

During debate around the city’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism – which a majority of council voted to refer to committee, effectively defeating it – critics of the definition warned that it could place limits on the right to criticize Israel, despite that the definition explicitly states that it is legally non-binding. While the condemnation of antisemitism is not an international issue, examples accompanying the definition included several relating to anti-Zionism.

Because of the history of using civic positions as platforms for international issues, the Independent asked candidates we profiled two additional questions: “Will you (or won’t you) use your position as a platform to discuss international affairs, specifically Palestine and Israel?” and “If so, can you provide a brief explanation of your perspective on the subject?”

Christine Boyle, the incumbent Vancouver city councilor who voted to refer the IHRA issue to committee, said that commenting on international affairs is not generally part of the role of a city councilor.

“And there are so many important issues and struggles locally that continue to be the focus of my attention,” she said. “But my practice on any topic is to listen to and engage with communities most impacted on an issue, always seeking to uphold human rights, peace and justice.

“I have spent much of my adult life actively engaged in justice work, including opposing and challenging hate and discrimination, and working to strengthen the human rights of all people,” she continued. “I am deeply committed to challenging antisemitism and ensuring that Jewish residents in Vancouver feel safe at home, at worship, and everywhere.

“When a motion came to council asking Vancouver to adopt the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism, council received hundreds of emails on the subject, with a diverse range of perspectives on the topic,” said Boyle. “Even my own Jewish family members didn’t all agree on the issue. What I heard clearly from the community was that, while there wasn’t agreement on this definition, there was absolutely a need for the city to do more to address antisemitism and racism. And so council referred the definition to the City of Vancouver’s Racial and Cultural Equity Advisory Committee, with direction for staff to continue working vociferously to address antisemitism and other forms of racism and hate. Since then I have worked hard each budget cycle to ensure our anti-racism and anti-hate efforts are well funded and supported, and will continue that work.”

Vancouver council candidate Ken Charko told the Independent, “Yes, I would use my position as a city councilor as a platform to discuss international affairs [and] yes support of Israel will be part of that platform…. I support Canada moving its embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing it as the capital of Israel. I would use my position as a Vancouver city councilor and federal Conservative member to outline why Canada should do that under the next Conservative government.”

John Irwin, an incumbent member of the Vancouver Park Board, switched from the Coalition of Progressive Electors last election to Vision Vancouver this election because, he said, “There was a disagreement with COPE regarding their lack of acceptance of the IHRA definition of antisemitism (which was accepted by the Canadian government).”

He added: “As a local politician, I generally use my platform to discuss local issues.”

Carla Frenkel, also a candidate for the Vancouver Park Board, said simply: “I have no intention to use the role of park board commissioner as a platform for international affairs.”

Kyla Epstein, who is seeking a seat on the Vancouver School Board, said that, to her knowledge, international affairs do not regularly come up at the school board table, nor is it generally within the scope of the role of a trustee to take a position on international affairs.

“What I do know is that I bring to the role a deep commitment to human rights and an opposition to antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, and all forms of discrimination, racism and hatred,” she said. “In addition, my approach to governance is to listen, welcome different perspectives and reduce barriers for public and stakeholder participation – on any issue. I will fight to uphold a public education system that is a place of learning, curiosity and questioning. I will, no matter the issue that comes to the school board table, reach out to communities, listen and learn, and make my decisions to uphold human rights and equality.”

Ellison Mallin, running for council in the District of North Vancouver, said, “I am always discussing international issues with people, as, in this increasingly connected world, events that happen anywhere can affect us here.

“I do not intend to use any municipal specific platforms, or my position, to bring up Israel and Palestine, and will keep discussions on the subject to appropriate venues. I do recognize that, given my religion, there will likely be comments and questions directed to me, which I will not shy away from,” he said. “I strongly believe in Israel’s right to exist. A safe place for Jewish people to live and to foster Jewish identity and culture is needed. Perhaps, sadly, it is needed now more than ever, as we do see a rise in antisemitism in many areas. On that note, I do not deny Palestine’s right to exist, and believe a two-state solution is needed. I would also like to see Israel stop building settlements in the West Bank, as this further creates divides and hostilities.”

Jonathan Lerner, council candidate in Lantzville, said he does not see Middle Eastern affairs coming into play in Lantzville politics. But, he added: “Everyone familiar with my work will know that I am a strong advocate for respectful dialogue on these issues.

“Where I think municipal governments can play a larger role is in diversity, inclusion and anti-racism initiatives,” said Lerner. “Many communities, including the Jewish, Muslim and LGBTQ communities, have been targeted by an increase in hate crimes in Canada. Municipalities have a key role to play in addressing this issue. For example, governments of all levels are considering adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, as well as other racism classifications that help to define and address discrimination.”

Extremism not helpful

Over the Labour Day weekend, while many Canadians were soaking up the declining rays of summer or doing last-minute back-to-school shopping, Middle East politics eclipsed everything else – well, for those of us who track these things closely, which, it turns out includes Jagmeet Singh, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party.

In fairness, it is not clear when Singh hit send on an email that made the rounds over the holiday weekend. But the contents led the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs to send out not one but two urgent emails on the issue, both of which included the word “outraged” in the subject line.

And “outrage” is a fair reaction to the contents of Singh’s missive.

“We believe Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories is at the centre of the challenges facing the Palestinian and Israeli people,” wrote Singh. This essentialist view ignores the reality that the occupation continues due to a complex interplay between anti-Israel terrorism, a lack of political will, and intractability around a two-state solution or some other coexistence plan that would lead to greater peace, which includes a lack of willingness to coexist from factions on both sides of the conflict.

“We all want to see a future where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side, in peace,” Singh writes. But then he goes on to outline a list of grievances that places responsibility only on Israelis and which, therefore, is unlikely to do anything to realize such a future.

The demands include that the Canadian government increase funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, “which supports Palestinian refugees.” The letter makes no reference to the controversial nature of UNRWA’s definition of refugees, which has refugee status passing down generations, thereby continually increasing their number, perpetuating rather than ameliorating the problem. Nor does the NDP letter mention the organization’s Palestinian education curriculum, which contains antisemitic elements that directly impede any progress towards peace in the region; allegations of corruption and mismanagement of the agency; and even UNWRA’s witting or unwitting aid of the terrorist group Hamas, with tunnels reportedly being found under UNRWA schools and rockets stored on their premises. Instead, the letter calls on Canada to “condemn the Israeli government’s attacks on civil society in Israel and Palestine, including the recent designation of six Palestinian human rights groups as ‘terrorist.’”

There are wishes for “peace in Israel and Palestine” in the NDP letter, but the lack of peace is blamed solely on one side, without acknowledging the violence and harms inflicted on Israelis. The fundamental fact of the issue is that no blatantly one-sided position will make things better for either Palestinians or Israelis and any position that places all the blame on one side will not lead to a resolution. Such a stance will only perpetuate conflict. Peace and coexistence in that region will depend on compromise on both sides.

In the larger scheme of world events, an imbalanced missive from the leader of a Canadian political party is largely irrelevant. Singh’s catalogue of blame will move the dial in Israel and Palestine not an inch. What it does is inflame the issue here at home and reinforce the trend in Canadian politics that sees this issue as a political football. At the same time as there are legitimate and important critiques of Israel’s behaviour and treatment of Palestinians, particularly those under occupation, Jewish self-determination should not be anyone’s campaign talking point.

There is a lesson here for those who support Israel, too. There is a strain that sees Israel supporters as more moral, more fair and more realistic than the activists who march against “apartheid,” “genocide” and what Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas recently called “50 holocausts” against Palestinians. However, the incessant and dishonourable contesting of the very existence of Palestinian people – if you haven’t seen it, you’re not on Jewish social media – does nothing to advance the cause of Jewish self-determination or end the human suffering or move anyone towards peace.

Extremism is not a Canadian value, nor a Jewish one – and it will not result in an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nor will it solve any of the countless challenges we are facing around the world. We need to resist the attraction of simplistic solutions to complex human problems. We need to do, think and behave better. And we need to demand that our leaders to do so, as well.

Happy 74th birthday, Israel!

Like many Jewish kids who go to religious school twice a week, my understanding of Israel and its history was, well, simplistic. That changed when I was 16.

I went to live, on my own, on Kibbutz Beit HaShita for a year as part of their “American school” program. It was transformative for me in many ways. Among other things, I learned that Hebrew was a living, dynamic language, Jews were a diverse and complex people and that the land’s history was complicated. Also, I found out that, even far away from home, if, heaven forbid, something went wrong, there were, as Mr. Rogers described, helpers all around me. It was like all these strangers were distant relatives, a feeling I’d never experienced before.

I was a teenager, speaking in my third language, at a bus stop late one night in Jerusalem. I was scared I would miss the bus and not make it back to my class or back to the kibbutz. The motherly woman at the bus stop engaged me in small talk. “Oh,” she said, “You sound like you come from Beit HaShita. My cousin lives there. Don’t worry. If you miss the right bus, you can spend the night on my living room couch.” I felt alarmed at the time, but the bus arrived and I got home safely. I still remember that kind person’s offer – and it’s been more than 30 years.

For several reasons, I’ve never been back to Israel. I’ve wanted to go but life got in the way. Also, I did a lot more learning, in undergraduate and graduate school, and the complexity of the political situation felt intense. I navigated the opinions expressed in the Arabic classes I took and those of friends from all over the world. Due to antisemitism or facing someone who “hated Israel,” it sometimes felt hard to explain where I’d lived. I didn’t feel OK about some of Israel’s policy choices at times. I believed (and still do) that Palestinians deserved their own state, much the way many Israelis do, but I wasn’t Israeli so I didn’t vote there. It wasn’t my place to shift their politics. I just didn’t want to erase Israel. Yet, I also wasn’t sure if my very limited travel money should be spent on that tourism industry.

All this began to change after my twins were born. Winnipeg is a city of immigrants. Many newcomers I met in the Jewish community here spoke Hebrew and had lived for awhile in Israel, even if they were born elsewhere. After many years of only using prayer Hebrew, my brain woke up. Modern Hebrew sometimes began coming out of my mouth again. Suddenly, I was standing at the coat racks outside of the preschool classroom, trying to help a 2-year-old new to the school from Israel and, whoa, the preschooler Hebrew just came out of my mouth at a quick pace. My twins were stunned!

After the May 2021 war in Israel and Gaza, I spent time unfollowing and changing my social media habits. I wanted less hate and more nuanced news sources. Some of that news now arrives in Hebrew first, with occasional other languages mixed in. I got back in touch with my Hebrew study partner from university days, who lives in Jerusalem. When we streamed services from synagogue or made a seder, I felt more connected to those prayers about the state of Israel than I had in a long time.

The recent deaths in Israel, caused by terrorists who killed civilians, border patrols and police officers, Jews, Druze, Christians, Israelis and even Ukrainian workers, hit me hard. It felt again like I was losing cousins and friends. Even amid the isolation of pandemic times, I keenly felt the loss of these Israeli souls.

Birthdays are funny things. There are years when my own birthday comes and goes without much fanfare. I make myself a chocolate cake, some relatives or friends call, nothing much happens. I’m not much for big parties. Even before the pandemic, sometimes my early January birthdays were frigid and unremarkable. This year, though, I anticipate Israel’s 74th with a more deeply felt celebration.

I’m not likely to be part of a big event on Yom Ha’atzmaut and, for now, my travel budget remains small. Rising antisemitism in the world makes me worried though. It reminds me of how we need to ensure this safe place for future generations. I am in awe of just how much Israel has accomplished so far – in technology, education, medicine and more.

This is a year when I feel a big need to celebrate Israel and its continued existence amid adversity. Sometimes, bad things happen. Finding a space for gratitude helps remind us of what we do have – places to call home.

Happy birthday, Israel! Wishing you and all your inhabitants a happy, healthy and peaceful year to come. May you grow in mitzvot and success this year – and wishing you many, many productive years to come.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Stepping back from abyss

Daniel Sokatch, New Israel Fund chief, urges openness to narratives of both peoples. (photo from JCC Jewish Book Festival)

The experiences of Jews and Arabs in the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean are complex and both peoples deserve to have their stories understood, according to a leading voice of progressive Zionism.

Daniel Sokatch was the keynote speaker at the closing event of the 2022 Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival Feb. 10. Sokatch is chief executive officer of the New Israel Fund, a U.S.-based nonprofit funding Israeli civil and human rights organizations and initiatives, which also engages in reconciliation and conflict resolution efforts between Israelis and Palestinians. He shared reflections from his new book Can We Talk About Israel? A Guide for the Curious, Confused and Conflicted, which was illustrated by Christopher Noxon.

“Over my years of service at NIF as the chief executive officer – I’ve been there for over 13 years now – I witnessed personally the discourse about Israel become more heated, more vituperative, more emotional and less fact-based,” Sokatch said. He wrote the book to give average people “a GPS to the conflict that would help them negotiate their own relationship to this complex issue.”

Israel was at the edge of an abyss before the new eight-party coalition government was sworn in last year, Sokatch said.

“This government is a Frankenstein’s monster made up of parties of the right, centre, left and Arab community that shouldn’t work but does work because enough people from all parties, except for the hard right-wing parties, knew that Benjamin Netanyahu was leading Israel over a cliff,” he said. “That was my editorial opinion but it is also the rationale for this government.”

A chunk of the Israeli public realized that Netanyahu was moving Israel toward neo-authoritarianism and a “democracy recession,” said Sokatch. This was exemplified, in part, by moves to abrogate the country’s balance between its Jewish and its democratic identities, he said.

“Israel passed a series of laws – most of them, I think it’s important to note, passed only barely – that really reduce the standing of Arab citizens of Israel to something that looked a lot more like second-class citizenry,” said Sokatch. “The worst of these laws was something called the Nation-State Law.… The Nation-State Law essentially said to Arab-Israeli citizens, you may have the right to vote but only Jewish citizens of the state have the right to what the law says is ‘self-determination.’… It stripped Arabic of its official language status…. The only reason you do things like that is if you want to throw red meat to your base and make a statement to the minority about where they stand. Anyone who has been to Israel recently – and by recently I mean at any point during its entire existence as a state – knows that the Jewish character of Israel is under no threat. In that sense, the alarm raised by Netanyahu and that Nation-State Law was like [former U.S. president Donald] Trump’s Muslim ban. It was a draconian solution for a problem that doesn’t actually exist.”

Reuven Rivlin, who was president of Israel at the time, acknowledged that he was obligated to sign the bill into law, but promised to sign in Arabic, which he did as a symbol of protest.

Sokatch addressed the recent Amnesty International report that accuses Israel of operating an apartheid system. He said that any honest and fair-minded left-wing observer who traveled the length and breadth of Israel would recognize that the apartheid label does not fit. But, he added, any honest and fair-minded right-wing observer who traveled the length and breadth of the West Bank would see things that could legitimately justify the terminology.

“I happen to think that the Amnesty report is deeply flawed,” he said. But, on the flip side: “To dismiss it all as antisemitism is to, like an ostrich, stick your head in the ground and ignore the reality of the problem.”

If Jews worldwide are held responsible for Israel’s actions, that is antisemitic, he said. Likewise, if Israel is depicted as a tentacled monster controlling the world, or if Jews are depicted as clannish, disloyal and the embodiment of “cosmic evil,” these are examples of antisemitism. The hostage-taking at a Texas synagogue in January is another example.

“Why did the guy go to a synagogue, instead of a church or McDonald’s or wherever?” Sokatch asked. “He went to the synagogue because he thought the Jews could get him what he wanted. He thought that we were so powerful in the United States that we could pick up the phone and tell Joe Biden to let the person he wanted let out of jail let out of jail. When criticism of Israel engages in those tropes, you can bet your life it’s antisemitism.”

But these examples of bias should not blind people to the legitimate criticisms being leveled against Israel, he warned. He hopes his book will open up more dialogue.

“Too often, I think, we are afraid to talk about the hard things,” he said. “What is the role of Israel’s Arab citizenry? What is the relationship between the U.S. and Israeli Jewish communities, the two largest Jewish communities in the history of the world? What is the deal with the settlements? Is Israel an apartheid state? What is the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement? I didn’t want to shy away from those things. But I also felt strongly that, in order to have an intelligent conversation about them, or to hold informed opinions about them, you have to know what you’re talking about.”

The first half of his book is mostly straightforward history, he said, with his analysis in the second half. He encourages a more fluent understanding of the narratives of both peoples.

“These are two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, who have been victims of the world, of each other and of themselves,” said Sokatch. “I felt that it was important to hold both of their stories with compassion and curiosity and concern, and to acknowledge that both parties have legitimate claims to this little place between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Both of these peoples have real histories of trauma and persecution and both of them have stories that help them understand who they are and where they are in the world and their connection to this place, and I wanted to tell those stories rather than just one of the stories.”

Sokatch appeared virtually in conversation with Dana Camil Hewitt, director of the book festival. Rikki Jacobson, chair of the festival committee, welcomed the audience and thanked the speaker.

Battle of ideas … & lies

Bret Stephens (photo from harrywalker.com/speakers/bret-stephens)

Western media have got the narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wrong, says Bret Stephens, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, editor and columnist who is an opinion writer for the New York Times. But, for a journalist to diverge from that entrenched storyline is almost impossible.

Stephens, a former editorial page editor at the Wall Street Journal and managing editor of the Jerusalem Post, recalled when he first started covering the region, in 2000.

“I went out there purely wearing my journalist’s hat and saw a story that was very different from the story that was being reported by many of my colleagues in the mainstream press,” said Stephens in a Sept. 23 webinar hosted by Honest Reporting Canada.

“I think lots of the Western press have continued to get much of the story dead wrong, most of all on that fundamental question: who is the aggressor?”

An example of media’s inability to diverge from a predetermined storyline came in 2019, he said, when residents of Gaza were protesting against the oppression and economic deprivation brought on by the Hamas regime that governs the seaside enclave. The global media, which tends to focus disproportionately on Palestinian concerns, almost entirely ignored the anti-Hamas activism, Stephens said.

“They wanted the world to believe that Palestinians in Gaza had one problem,” Stephens said, “and the name of that problem was Israel.”

Accurate reporting from Palestine is also a challenge because Western media hire freelancers, or “stringers,” in Gaza and the West Bank who do not operate with the same freedoms that reporters in Israel enjoy.

“They have colleagues in Gaza, where the pressure is not-so-subtle for those stringers to toe a particular ideological line, to not report stories that would be inconvenient for the Hamas narrative,” he said.

Winning the battle of ideas, Stephens said, is a priority for Hamas.

“The field of combat is not the battle they know they’re ultimately going to lose against Israel, but the one they think they’re going to win in the realm of public opinion,” he said.

Stephens clarified that he is a columnist, paid to have opinions. But too many journalists today, he said, either view themselves as activists or cannot differentiate their own opinions from straightforward reporting.

The broader context of societal understanding of what were once considered verifiable truths does not bode well for Jews, he added.

“Race is replacing ethnicity as the defining marker of group and personal identification,” he said. “Now we have this new kind of racialism that is dividing people into people of colour and white people. So Jews find themselves, or the majority who are not Jews of colour find themselves, shunted into a racial classification that they don’t recognize as their own.

“I don’t think of myself as a white guy,” he said. “I don’t feel like I have participated in any system of white supremacy. I am the son of a woman who was a hidden child in the Holocaust. She was hunted down for not being white. A Jew. To somehow pair me in this new scheme with the white mask is an injustice to millions of Jews who feel deeply discomfited by this new racialism.”

He added: “Jews have never, never done well when racialist dogma becomes a defining feature of society.”

Other social trends should alarm Jewish people, said Stephens, a conservative writer who calls himself a “never-Trump Republican.”

“The concept of personal success is now being called privilege,” he said. “There are all kinds of Jews who came to these shores in North America with nothing, or next to nothing, and who achieved, by virtue of hard work, effort, ingenuity, good luck, whatever. But now success is being called privilege and privilege is being seen as a product not of individual merit, but as a system of oppression.”

Further, he said, independent thinkers are now being treated as heretics, “and Jews have a long tradition of independent thinking.”

The widespread acceptance of outlandish lies, exemplified by the so-called “Pizzagate” theory, the group QAnon and the idea that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was unjustly stolen from Donald Trump, are an indication of fringe ideas seeping into the body politic, he said.

“We now have come to a place where, increasingly, we are a nation that can bring ourselves to believe anything and a nation that can bring itself to believe anything … sooner or later, is going to have no problem believing the worst about Jews. This is the moment that we’re in.

“Conspiracy thinking has gone mainstream and there is no bigger conspiracy theory in the world than antisemitism,” he said.

Stephens challenged the rote assertion that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” by making a stark comparison.

“What is antisemitism?” he asked. “It is a belief, born in the 19th century, that Jews were imposters and swindlers. They were imposters because they were pretending to be Europeans, whether German or French or Italians or whatever, but they were really Semites; that they are not from Europe, they are from the Middle East. And, it said further, these imposters are swindlers because they are trying to swindle real Europeans out of their financial wealth and culture and heritage or whatever. Now, think of what anti-Zionism has shown us. Anti-Zionism is the view that Jews are imposters and swindlers, that they claim to have a Middle Eastern descent but there is no Jewish connection to the land of Israel – that’s the line. And they’re swindlers – they’re swindling Palestinians out of their land.”

Stephens said he supports a two-state solution, “just not now.”

“In theory, a two-state solution is the ideal outcome,” he said. “We should labour towards that, while knowing that it could take 10 or 50 years.

“The prospect of a Palestinian state today isn’t about where you draw the borders. It’s about whether a self-governing Palestinian state can have enough pluralism, liberalism, democracy, tolerance and, above all, a willingness to live in an enduring peace with its neighbours … because the last thing Israel needs is re-creating what the Gaza Strip has become in the West Bank.”

Demanding Palestinian self-determination now, he said, is like inducing a baby in the 20th week of pregnancy.

“It’s going to result in tragedy. Let’s be mindful of what the long-term goal is, but let’s be practical and thoughtful and sensible about how we get to it.”

Honest Reporting Canada describes itself as an independent grassroots organization promoting fairness and accuracy in Canadian media coverage of Israel and the Middle East. The webinar is available for viewing at honestreporting.ca.

Hate not acceptable at SFU

“Antisemitism is hate, and it is not acceptable at SFU,” said Simon Fraser University president and vice-chancellor Joy Johnson. (photo by Jeff Hitchcock / flickr)

The president of Simon Fraser University met with Jewish students recently and issued a statement condemning antisemitism on campus and directing those who experience anti-Jewish racism to appropriate resources.

After meeting with Jewish students, Joy Johnson, Simon Fraser’s president and vice-chancellor, tweeted on July 12: “Their experiences were deeply upsetting.”

“Antisemitism is hate, and it is not acceptable at SFU,” she added. “If you are experiencing discrimination or hate, help is available. Please reach out.”

The university, in consultation with the SFU Multifaith Centre and Hillel BC, created a resource for those who have experienced antisemitism. This includes links to campus chaplains, confidential counseling and critical incident support for significant events.

Like many university campuses, SFU has a history of anti-Israel activism that can often veer into antisemitic imagery and tropes. The latest eruption occurred at the first council meeting of a newly elected Simon Fraser Students Society. Occurring around the time of the most recent conflict between Hamas and Israel, the council meeting passed a resolution endorsing the boycott, divestment and sanction movement against Israel (BDS) in what Jewish students view as a biased and unfair meeting.

The student society’s resolution – titled “SFSS Response to the Israeli Colonization of Palestine” – accused Israel of “disproportionate violence,” claiming “worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque were indiscriminately targeted by Israeli police forces” and condemning “the ongoing persecution of the Palestinian people by the government of Israel.” The resolution endorsed the BDS movement and expressed no parallel concerns about Palestinian terrorism, violence, incitement or human rights abuses. It also accused the United States and Canada of complicity in perceived Israeli misdeeds. The resolution passed unanimously.

The student society brought in Dalya Masri, a Palestinian activist, to provide “expert” testimony before the vote, said Katia Fermon, outreach coordinator for Hillel BC, the Jewish student organization.

“She gave a presentation, which was beyond hurtful for Jewish students,” said Fermon. Masri, she said, compared the First Intifada to the sort of peaceful rallies that happen on the streets of Vancouver.

“My students have family that died in the First and the Second Intifada,” Fermon said. “This is not a strange thing for us, and she just mentioned it like it was a rally.”

The presenter accused Israel of taking over territory in 1967, while eliding the larger facts around the Six Day War and other realities, she said.

Fermon said that, in preparation for the vote, the SFSS consulted with Independent Jewish Voices, but did not consult with Hillel.

“That fact is very hurtful,” she said. “Independent Jewish Voices is not a club on campus, however Hillel Jewish Students Association is. They pay their dues.… We are a part of that union. Those voices were not asked for or heard.”

Hillel BC issued a statement condemning the student society’s approach.

“Instead of supporting an open and extensive dialogue amongst students, the SFSS has chosen to perpetuate the agenda of a movement whose use of harmful terminology fails to address the root causes of the conflict, ignoring centuries of complex history in which power dynamics constantly shifted,” it reads. “This rhetoric further sows hate and division instead of helping work towards a peaceful two-state solution. The SFSS has decided to single out the state of Israel instead of opening a space for adequate dialogue between Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian students on campus wherein we may critique the policies of the state while being mindful of the hate that may result in endorsing certain statements, activists or movements.”

It added that BDS “openly traffics in antisemitic conspiracies and dog whistles” and noted that nearly two decades of BDS activism has not “freed Palestine from violence or oppression. Instead, it has been to stoke aggression and polarization online, in the streets and on campuses.”

In a statement to the Independent, Nico Slobinsky, director of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Pacific region, said: “The statement by SFU’s president is an important step in denouncing the rising tide of anti-Jewish hate on campus. CIJA thanks president Dr. Joy Johnson for recognizing that SFU is not immune from antisemitism. Combating anti-Jewish hatred is not only about protecting Jews but also about protecting the very fabric of our society, on and off campus.

“CIJA appreciates the strong friendship and commitment shown by Dr. Johnson to creating a campus that is inclusive, diverse, safe and open to all students,” Slobinsky added. “CIJA looks forward to working with SFU alongside our campus partner, Hillel BC, towards ensuring a healthy campus environment.”

Students have been studying remotely for more than a year and so most of the discussion, which has included a litany of offensive comments, has taken place on official and unofficial online platforms, including the primary undergraduate forum.

One Israeli student, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was one of a few who spoke up in opposition to the prevailing bias in the dialogue.

“I didn’t expect it to go smoothly,” she said. “There was a lot of backlash in the moment and it is still going on.… A lot of comments are being deleted and monitored but there are a lot of hateful comments.”

The statements frequently included slogans such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and other comments promising the annihilation of Israel. Israel was compared with Nazi Germany, Rhodesia, apartheid-era South Africa and plantation-owning slaveholders. Concerns about the safety of Jewish people were dismissed as efforts to “stifle” legitimate criticism of Israel.

“As an Israeli, I don’t want to believe they said them personally to me,” the student said. “I try my best not to take all those comments personally, but sometimes it gets there.”

As she and other students prepare to return to campus this fall for the first time in more than a year, she said she is not concerned for her personal safety, but she is worried about some of her friends.

“I was born in Israel and I have a little bit of Israeli inside of me so, for myself, I’m not that worried,” she said. “Obviously, it’s not a nice experience.” Whether the online threats and vitriol turn into real-time incidents remains to be seen, she said, but some of her Jewish friends are already taking cover.

“They are not wearing their Star of David,” she said. “They never say out publicly that they are Jewish: to not get into a conflict, to avoid any debate on the matter, they just decided not to. I think it’s a shame…. It is a shame that we live in Canada in the 21st century and people are choosing to hide part of their identity. For myself, it’s a big chunk of my identity, so I’m not going to hide it, but I can’t blame people who choose to. I empathize with them.”

Contemplating walls

The separation wall, Bayt Mirsim. (photo by Kevin Keystone)

In this three-part series, the author recounts some of his experiences on Masar Ibrahim Al-Khalil, the Path of Abraham the Friend, in the West Bank, which he visited in 2019. The articles have been adapted from a few of the letters he wrote home to family. The events and people described are real but, for reasons of privacy, the names are fictitious. To read Part 1, click here; for Part 2, click here.

Today was our last day on the trail. After many late nights of parlour games, beers and anticipation, we were tired. One of our fellow hikers, Felix, had to stop periodically: the soles of his shoes had worn through, he could feel the tiny stones biting underneath. Uncharacteristically, he was in pain, but he muscled through.

We descended into a valley, dotted with pale green brush, reminiscent of our first days on the trail. The valley opened into expansive views of olive groves, steppes cut into the hills, tidy rows of trees buttressed by stone walls. It could have been Tuscany but was the Middle East, with a warm breeze and soft, popcorn-shaped clouds overhead.

Admiring the scenery, I thought of what lay ahead. I would be spending tonight in Jerusalem. It was a place I hadn’t been since my Birthright trip eight years ago. My rabbi had once invited me on a congregational tour of Israel, in recognition of my service to the synagogue, but I turned it down. A friend rightly pointed out that, as an Arab Muslim, he couldn’t visit the Holy Land as readily as I could. In solidarity, he suggested I shouldn’t go. That seemed fair, so I didn’t. But here I was, so close to Jerusalem and the Wailing Wall. How could I not go?

* * *

It was a hot day on my Birthright tour. We weaved our way through the Old City, through its various souks and alleyways, to arrive at a platform high above the Wailing Wall plaza. Our guides wanted us to see it there first for a clear, unobstructed view. It wasn’t busy, just another day in Jerusalem at the Wall and the holiest site in Judaism. The wide-open plaza was sleek and clean, the great stone wall standing pink and golden.

We descended towards it, and I could feel the heat. I was dehydrated and a bit dizzy. Our guides released us and we ambled forward, dazed, in the wall’s general direction. A man stopped me and asked if I wanted to put on a prayer shawl. I did. He asked me if I wanted to lay tefillin. I had never done it before. He helped me. “Repeat after me,” he said. “Baruch atah Adonai …” as he wrapped the leather band around my forearm.

Prepared, I approached, pulled in by the wall’s gravity. I slipped off my sandals to stand on the ground with my bare feet. I pressed my hand to the mottled stone and closed my eyes. “Baruch atah Adonai,” I began. Strangely, I felt both heavy and light, a yearning and also a surrender. I said the Avot v’Imahot, the prayer that recognizes our descent from Abraham and Sarah, tracing us back through the generations. I didn’t know, then, how important that moment and that prayer would be.

When I was finished, I slipped on my sandals and stepped away.

* * *

“This might be the most beautiful day on the trail,” said Jane, a soft-spoken homeopath, a Mancunian and longtime friend of fellow hikers Eve and Oliver. Her husband George was in business software. He regularly meditated.

She was right. I was worn out but had to agree. It was beautiful. Picturesque, even. Idyllic. We pulled over, as we had during our first week, to have coffee with olive harvesters and help them rake the trees. A young mother with her toddler, husband and parents: harvesting is so often a family affair. Hospitable as ever, much coffee and tea was poured and drank, olives collected, tobacco rolled, puffed and exchanged. We waved our goodbyes – shukran, aleykum salaam – and continued on.

A stretch of valley gave off onto a final stretch of orchards and, as I clambered over the low stones, I looked up and saw the separation wall. From a distance, the 25-foot concrete wall, scrawled with barbed wire, rose through the canopy of the trees. Hesitatingly, I walked towards it, tracing its contour in my mind. In some parts of the West Bank, the barrier is composed of giant slabs of concrete dotted with military towers; in others, it is coiling pyramids of barbed wire or electrified fence bordered by wide swaths of sand to detect trespassers. Here, it is rebar and cement, two-and-a-half storeys high, and cuts through olive groves and the hills around it. I pressed my hand to it; it was cold and abraiding. I closed my eyes and said a prayer for a future without it.

photo - Dawn at the Dead Sea — Dawn at the Dead Sea. *(photo from Kevin Keystone)*

* * *

Compared to the West Bank, downtown Jerusalem feels like another planet. I spent that night in a small apartment hotel off Jaffa Street, a few blocks from the Old City. It was a one-bedroom suite with a fully equipped kitchen and three-piece bathroom. The water was hot, the shower had walls and a showerhead, and I could drink the water. It was unlike many nights on the Masar.

Jaffa Street reminded me of places like Vienna or Vancouver: the pavement was so clean you could eat off of it. The pedestrian walkways alongside were spacious and wide, paved with smooth and even slate-gray tiles. The streetcars were sleek and punctual. Art galleries and museums, ornamental lights and public transportation, urban and urbane. First world versus developing; moneyed versus struggling. The contrast was deeply uncomfortable.

My friend Marta and I wound our way through the narrow, dreamlike alleyways of Nakhalat Tziyon, the walls lined with thick slabs of golden Jerusalem stone. A playful breeze danced through the trees. We stopped for lunch at a picturesque café, complete with colourful outdoor seating and painfully handsome servers. The food was delicious and expensive; we ordered hummus that came with falafel and sweet lemonade.

“How is this real?” I asked her.

“I know,” she said. “It’s shocking.”

After lunch, I returned to the place I had been many years before. I followed the signs in the Old City, the pull magnetic, feeling a mix of dread and anticipation. I saw it first as before, from above, the top of the staircase leading down to the Kotel.

Few tourists were out today, just the heat and people praying. Orthodox tradition dictates separating the genders; indeed, on the women’s side, a fraction the size of the men’s, Torah scrolls are still officially prohibited. Today, the women’s side was packed, the men’s side dotted with the odd worshipper. At the tefillin tent, an old man shawled me in his tallit. A red-headed, black-hat wearing Charedi named Isaac helped me with the tefillin. He looked about my age, or a few years younger. In another life, I wondered, would I have been him?

“Did you do this yourself?” he asked, pointing to the forearm I had already bound.

“I did,” I said. For a month, in the intervening years, I had done it every morning. “I just can’t remember how to do the hand part.”

“I can help,” he said. Isaac said many things: about God, what God wanted, the prayers I could say at the Wall. “Sometimes, you might feel like the worst Jew ever,” he said. I didn’t. I never felt that way. I wasn’t a “good Jew” or a “bad Jew,” I was just Jewish.

“Say a prayer for all your loved ones, then say a prayer for yourself,” he said. “Then maybe you’ll say a prayer for me, too.”

Blocks of stone peppered with bits of paper: the wall hadn’t changed, but I had. I pressed my hand to it, feeling its soft, pockmarked face, and closed my eyes.

* * *

I’m home now, in Canada, and wonder about my travels. I came back “with eyes wide open,” as my rabbi had prayed: to the painful, joy-filled and resilient lives of the Palestinians I met. I think about the separation wall and the Kotel, how they’re connected and what it meant to pray at them, different but related prayers. If the Wailing Wall is part of us as Jews, then perhaps its future and our spiritual liberation is bound together with the separation wall. Perhaps the Kotel will never truly be honoured until we bring down the separation wall. As I contemplate the stories of our freedom from bondage, I’m reminded of the idea that our liberation, spiritual and otherwise, is bound up with the liberation of others.

Kevin Keystone is a Toronto-based freelance writer, editor and researcher. When not hiking long-distance trails, he can be found reading, spending time with friends and family, or with his beloved partner, Aaron. His writing has been published in the Literary Review of Canada, the Jewish Independent and Good Old Boat. For this series, he thanks the guides and staff of Siraj (the Masar Ibrahim Thru-Hike tour operator), the host families and locals he met along the way and his fellow hikers, as well as friend and editor Matt O’Grady.

Seeking to understand views

Descending into Jericho through “the Grand Canyon of the Middle East.” (photo by Kevin Keystone)

Tuesday was, by far, the hardest day of the trail. We climbed and descended two mountains: 1,500 feet up, 1,400 feet down; 1,000 feet up, 1,200 feet down. It’s 10 feet to a storey, so divide by 10 and think of them as flights of stairs, except that they’re rocky paths strewn with slippery rubble and spiky brambles.

Shrubs aside, Monday and Tuesday were thorny for other reasons. Our guide, Ismail, seemed very friendly. Jolly, with a wide smile and open face, he spoke English well and with a quirky British accent. He was nearly 40, married, had one young child and another on the way. He’s been a hiker and guide for a long time: trained at university, he is an expert in local fauna, flora and history. When a member of our group fell and cut his arm, Ismail was right there with bandages and fracture assessments. There was no question: he was a professional.

Ismail, though, had a satirical sense of humour, which, given the political landscape, was risky. He explained the settlers’ justification for occupying land in the West Bank. “They say that God gave it to them,” he said. The relevant verse from the Torah bubbled up in my memory. “Go forth from the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation,” goes Genesis 17. I knew it because I had chanted it for my bar mitzvah.

“If God gave it to them, what did God give to us? Nothing?” Ismail said. He was smiling, but wasn’t joking. “If they get this, we’ll take Spain. We don’t need to do archeological digs – our mosques are still there to prove it.” I chuckled along with the group, appreciating the irony. But I stood back, polishing my sunglasses.

“They say they are special,” he continued, “that they are ‘the chosen ones,’ but what does that mean? That they are made of gold and jewels, while the rest of us are mud?”

“And I will take you to be my people,” God says to Abram, also Genesis 17. “And I will make my covenant with you and your descendants and through all the generations.” This idea of “chosenness” has been interpreted, reinterpreted and, at times, even rejected in our history: Reconstructionist Jews, for example, changed the relevant lines of the Aleinu prayer. Thinking of ourselves that way certainly hasn’t done us any favours. But, still, Ismail’s comments stung a little.

Writing this, I suppose his humour was a bit like my dad’s: irreverent and occasionally tasteless. I had never been offended by my dad’s jokes; his topics were largely inconsequential to me. Here, with so much at stake, it was hard to not feel Ismail’s satire more deeply. I wanted to tell him I was offended, but part of me resisted.

Sue, on the other hand, had no problem speaking up. That evening, we gathered around to discuss plans for the next day. “Tomorrow,” Ismail said, laying out a map, “will be the hardest day on the trail. There are three options: we can either hike the whole day; stop halfway and take a car; or stop near the end and take a car.” We all agreed we’d hike the whole day. Sue sat back against the bench.

“Are you OK?” he asked her. “You looked scared.”

“I’m not,” Sue replied. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” he insisted. Sue was in her 70s: it seemed like he was singling her out because she was older, and possibly because she was female. “I am sorry if I scared you.”

“I’ve walked a thousand miles before,” she cut in. “I’m not scared.”

Eve laughed and said to Ismail, “Sue’s fine. It’s the two of us,” referring to her husband Oliver, herself, and their combined lack of hiking experience, “that you should be worried about.”

After the route was settled, Sue pulled Ismail aside. She pointed out to him the ageism and sexism implied in his doubting of her abilities. She was brisk; he was deeply apologetic.

“It’s fine,” she said, when he didn’t stop apologizing. “You apologized. It’s over. Howard and I fight, we apologize, it’s done.” After another round of reassurances and with parting words to the group, Ismail left for the night. I congratulated Sue on standing up for herself.

“Well, I’m an old lady,” she laughed. “I don’t have an issue speaking my mind.”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “Howard said you don’t take shit from anybody.” She laughed again. “But, still,” I said, “good for you for saying something.”

“Thank you, Kevin,” she said, looking at me. Even with her fortitude, I wondered if it had cost her to say something. Maybe, in some ways, it always does. “I appreciate it,” she said.

photo - A rest break, at 3 a.m., hiking to catch sunrise over the Dead Sea — A rest break, at 3 a.m., hiking to catch sunrise over the Dead Sea. *(photo by Kevin Keystone)*

* * *

The next day, I found myself quietly pleased at Ismail’s dressing down from Sue. Somehow it felt vindicating; even if I couldn’t find the words to speak my mind, at least someone else did.

“Before we start,” he said, “I need to show you something.”

He turned his smartphone to us and pressed play. The footage was of a road tunnel with an exit at the far end and a truck askew, blocking the way. There was shouting and then a hand flicking angrily towards a young man, yelling at him to walk. He did, with his back to the camera, one hand raised in surrender, the other halfway, awkwardly carrying a backpack. He couldn’t have been older than me. He kept walking, slowly, towards the truck and the tunnel exit. Just before he reached the truck, a shot fired. He cried out and sank to the ground.

Israeli Channel 13 News leaked the video – of an Israel Border Police officer shooting a Palestinian in the back with a rubber bullet, along with text messages sent by the shooter’s fellow officer, who had bragged about the shooting to his girlfriend. “I’m a pro, don’t you think?” he wrote.

This act of violence earned the shooter a removal from the police force. She was sent back to the Israeli army to finish her compulsory service. A year after the footage was discovered, the police internal investigations unit still hadn’t pressed charges. The apparent impunity is shocking. Compared to this, my grievances seemed trivial.

“Do you ever take Israelis on this hike,” someone asked Ismail.

“No, we don’t. We can’t, it’s too risky,” he said. “If something were to happen, if one of them gets hurt, we would all be in big trouble. Their government would say it is our fault, and we would have many, many problems.

“There are Jewish that come on the Masar,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he avoided looking at me. “We know; we don’t ask. But we will not take Israeli; we can’t.”

As the day wore on, I worked up my nerve to talk to him. I rehearsed my opener and hiked up beside him.

“So, what are your plans for after the hike,” I asked.

We didn’t talk about anything important, but it felt important to talk. I had time after the hike and didn’t have plans. I asked his advice on where I should go. I also asked him what I should say at the border if stopped.

“Just talk about the Abraham Path, how we’re all children of Abraham, peace, these kinds of things,” he said. “They like that.”

“Do you believe it?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. I tried to hide my disappointment. “You know,” he continued. “It isn’t the Jewish, it’s the Zionists. They are crazy, they think they are super-human. Every time the people are coming together, they want to separate, to make them apart. As long as this is the case,” he said, “I don’t think there will be peace.”

* * *

At lunch, I lay down to rest, settling in the shade of an olive tree. In the breeze, the leaves revealed twin shades of green, one on each side: rich, verdant forest green and pale, suede sage. There were no olives on this tree: likely, they had been recently picked. The absence they left made way for a cottony, afternoon light to filter through. As I nodded in and out of sleep, I caught glimpses of the sky. It was blue and clear.

Zionists come in many varieties, but I knew the ones Ismail was referring to. The imprecision of his language didn’t change the point. Yitzhak Rabin wasn’t assassinated by a Palestinian; he was assassinated by a Jew. A fanatical religious Zionist, a fervent supporter of the settlements and a deep-seated opponent of the peace process. Ismail didn’t have a problem with Jews, he had a problem with fanatics. That, I could get behind. I felt the same way.

“Right of return” a poison pill?

Among Middle East observers, there has long been a view that the demand for a Palestinian “right of return” is a bargaining chip that would be negotiated away in a final status agreement, perhaps in exchange for a symbolic but small number of Palestinian refugees admitted to Israel and a substantial amount of money as compensation.

In a new book, two prominent Israeli progressives argue that this assumption is wrong, that the right of return is an unwavering demand from the Palestinian side and, as a result, represents a poison pill that guarantees no resolution to the conflict or to Palestinian statelessness.

“The Palestinian conception of themselves as ‘refugees from Palestine,’ and their demand to exercise a so-called right of return, reflect the Palestinians’ most profound beliefs about their relationship with the land and their willingness or lack thereof to share any part of it with Jews,” write Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf in the book The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream has Obstructed the Path to Peace (All Points Books, 2020).

Wilf, a former Labour member of the Knesset, and Schwartz, an academic and journalist for Ha’aretz, have undeniable left-wing credentials. But, while the Israeli left has long been associated with the idea of compromise and idealism, the authors contend that there is little room for any sort of resolution as long as Palestinians cling to the idea that five million or more of them have the right to citizenship in Israel. Part of the failure of successive peace plans, they write, stems from the inability of negotiators to recognize the Palestinians’ tenacity in holding fast on this core issue – and argue that Israelis need to recognize that truth.

“[D]ecades of shuttling, strong-arming the sides, and endless hours of negotiations came to naught because none of the diplomats or negotiators truly understood and dealt with the root causes of the conflict, choosing instead to turn away and focus on that which appeared easier,” they write.

The status of Palestinian refugees is unique in the world. They have their own international agency devoted to the issue: UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, while all other refugees fall under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In this sole instance, the definition of “refugee” has been amended to become an inheritable status, meaning that the several hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs dislocated by wars in 1948-1949 and 1967 have ballooned to more than five million – even though many or most of the original refugees have died and the vast majority of those seeking “return” have in fact never lived or set foot in the state they claim for their own.

While exponentially more people were made refugees in the same era – in Europe, in the Indian subcontinent and at least 800,000 Jews forced from Arab- and Muslim-majority lands across the Middle East and North Africa – Schwartz and Wilf argue that Palestinians view themselves as having experienced a unique injustice.

They quote Aref al-Aref, a Palestinian writer who was mayor of East Jerusalem under Jordanian rule in the 1950s: “We have been afflicted by a catastrophe, we the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular, during this period of time in a way in which we have not been subjected to catastrophe in centuries and in other periods of time.…” Another Palestinian scholar, in 1950, wrote: “It is the most terrible disaster befalling the Arabs and the Muslims in modern history.… It is a deep-rooted disaster, far-reaching and full of dangers. It is an evil growing by the day and by the hour.” Another writer compared it with the Muslims losing Spain in the Middle Ages.

This almost apocalyptic language precludes compromise on what Palestinians have been promised through the generations by their leaders, according to the book. And, while plenty of voices, including academics, activists and politicians, have argued that the right of return would not be such a terrible thing for Israel’s well-being, the authors provide plenty of evidence that the proposed migration of millions of Palestinian Arabs into Israel is perhaps less about justice for refugees than it is about doing to the country through demographics what the Arab world has been unable to do militarily.

“It is well known and understood that the Arabs, in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, mean their return as masters of the homeland and not as its slaves. With greater clarity, they mean the liquidation of the state of Israel,” said a senior Egyptian politician in 1949, at the beginning of the refugees’ long history.

As an article in a Lebanese newspaper put it, the Palestinians’ return would “create a large Arab majority that would serve as the most effective means of reviving the Arab character to Palestine while forming a powerful fifth column for the day of revenge and reckoning.” Arab League Secretary-General Azzam Pasha viewed the refugees’ return as making it possible for “an irregular army that would be in a position to cause a great deal of inconvenience to the Jews by acts of sabotage.”

To ensure that the plan was not foiled, no matter how long it took to reach fruition, a now-seven-decade-old scheme was hatched to prevent Palestinian refugees in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere from putting down roots, argue the authors.

“The rehabilitation of the refugees in Arab countries would have meant the end of the war, but that was not what the Arabs wanted,” they write. While the Palestinians were made pawns of the Arab League’s campaign of “denormalization” against Israel, the book portrays most refugees as at least semi-willing players. Attempts to find resolutions to their statelessness have been met with outrage. When Canada’s foreign minister suggested some Palestinian refugees might find a permanent home in Canada, he was burned in effigy in Nablus.

UNRWA, which was presumably begun with the best of intentions, has been consumed by politics and corruption and usurped into what the authors contend is effectively a globally funded branch of the Palestinian liberation movement. Agency-funded textbooks used in Palestinian schools have been shown for decades to inculcate Jew-hatred, venerate terrorists and incite violence. Nevertheless, Palestinians receive through UNRWA among the most per capita humanitarian aid in the world and live a life of which most refugees – and the poor in most Arab countries – can only dream.

From the start, UNRWA’s first annual report, in 1951, noted that many or most refugees were enjoying a better way of life than they had before 1948, receiving universal free education and quality healthcare. The UNRWA schools, now with more than three generations of alumni, have created a uniquely well-educated population of refugees, but, along with reading, writing and arithmetic, the curriculum has created “an embittered, angry and frustrated generation, raised on myths about ethnic cleansing by the Jews, the perfidy of Arab leaders, a sense of victimhood and a refusal to take responsibility for the results of the Palestinians actions in the years and months before Israel’s birth and thereafter,” Wilf and Schwartz write.

The book does not paint an optimistic picture. Western diplomats, peacemakers and politicians refuse to recognize the Palestinian demand of return seriously and continue to believe it can be negotiated away.

“If return were truly just a bargaining chip,” write the authors, “it could have and would have been bargained long ago for a Palestinian state. Rather, it is a Palestinian state that is repeatedly bargained away in order to keep fighting for return.”

There are plenty of issues to discuss – if there were negotiations occurring – but, they argue, the entire Palestinian case rests on the thing Israel must reject.

“The one article that Israel could absolutely not agree to, as it entailed its very suicide, was the one without which the conflict would never end,” write Schwartz and Wilf.

Hike challenges one’s views

Sunrise at the Dead Sea. (photo from Kevin Keystone)

In this three-part series, the author recounts some of his experiences on Masar Ibrahim Al-Khalil, the Path of Abraham the Friend, which he visited in 2019. The articles have been adapted from a few of the letters he wrote home to family. The events and people described are real but, for reasons of privacy, the names are fictitious. To read Part 2, click here; for Part 3, click here.

I’m writing this from a rooftop deck in the small community of Arraba, about 15 kilometres from the West Bank’s northern border. We walked two days to get here along the Masar Ibrahim Al-Khalil, the Path of Abraham the Friend, a 330-kilometre trail from Rummanah in the north to Bayt Mirsim in the south. We’re here as part of a guided tour with the Siraj Centre; for 15 years, Siraj has organized walking, cycling and hiking experiences in Palestine.

Tonight, all eight of us will be staying at this villa. It’s unusual for a host to have so much room, but the Hassan family specially renovated their home to accommodate large groups. Noor, her husband and their five children have been hosting hikers on the Masar for five years. Throughout the hike, we’ll stay in homes like this, as well as hotels, guesthouses, Bedouin tents, and even a night in a cave.

Dusk has arrived; the evening view is clear and beautiful. The sun has set over the peaks and valleys of the West Bank, the lights of Palestinian villages and Israeli settlements shimmer around us. Beyond the hill ahead of me, backlit with shades of peach, rose and grey, lies Israel, Netanya and the Mediterranean Sea. A half-moon rises above.

The villages and settlements may seem quiet and peaceable, but are walled off from one another with concrete and hostility. The sea beyond means, for some, Europe, North Africa and its opportunities; for others, impassable waters. What is this place? How did we get here?

* * *

Five of us will walk all 25 days from Rummana to Bayt Mirsim: Felix and Thomas, Quebecois hiking companions in their 40s and 50s; Oliver and Eve, two 50-something activists from the United Kingdom; and myself, a 30-something freelance writer from Toronto. The remaining three will walk one to two weeks: John, a real-estate project manager who hiked Everest for his 60th birthday; and Sue and Howard, a retired teacher-principal duo from California. Neil, a young British doctoral student, hopped off yesterday and will be back for short stints in the coming weeks. Ines, an older Swede, walked with us for just the day.

After the hike, I plan to visit a friend in Beirut. In light of the protests against the government, I shared my reservations with Ines, who lived in Lebanon for two decades. “I lived in Beirut through the civil war,” she said, smiling. “You’ll be fine.”

If not all of us are quite so hardcore, we’re all mostly hikers. Sue and Howard walked 1,000 miles on the Camino de Santiago, Spain’s well-traveled Catholic pilgrimage-turned-hiking trail. I walked the Camino, but at half their age and half as far. Felix and Thomas are also Camino veterans: we all seem to have an affinity for long-distance trails in places of importance and meaning.

We are and aren’t here for the hiking. We’ve come to see Palestine for ourselves and hear directly from Palestinians. For my part, it felt like something of a responsibility. Like many Diaspora Jews, I have supported the state of Israel, either directly or indirectly, and benefited from it. I went on Birthright, the two-week, all-expenses-paid tour designed to build affinity and political support between young Jews and the state. I’m familiar with that side of the story – but after 50 years of occupation and a seemingly never-ending conflict, something didn’t quite fit for me.

Before I left for the Masar, I asked my rabbi for a blessing. In synagogue, she prayed that I would come here “with eyes wide open” and return home “with eyes opened wide.” It’s a prayer I share.

On the Camino, in Spain, locals are largely inured to tourists; here, on the Masar, tourists are rarer. Every local we pass waves hello, is happy and surprised to see us, stops us and wants to give us coffee. Yesterday, we were stopped often by olive-pickers – it’s the season for it. Enthusiastically, they beckoned us over to the stone borders of their groves, where we sat and shared thimbles of coffee spiked with cardamom. As we walked through towns and villages, small children yelled, “Hello! Hello!” and waved to us, their parents replying to our greetings of salaam aleykum (peace be upon you) with wa’ aleykum salaam (and peace upon you) and ahlan wa sahlan, you are welcome here. In these moments, of which there are many, I’m buoyed by unimpeachable hospitality.

This is, however, different from the Camino in other ways. I walked 40 days on the Camino and rarely thought about politics; here, every day is political. I never felt awkward about being Jewish on the Camino – except once, when I asked a local barkeep at a tavern called La Judería if there were any Jews left in the town. He laughed and said: “Not since the Inquisition.” Here, my being Jewish is something I keep to myself, to avoid assumptions about my politics. It’s different when you carry so little on your back and so much in your head. The walking is both easy and hard: mercifully, I have no blisters, but I’m still uncomfortable.

In the evening, after a home-cooked meal, we sipped sweet sage tea in the Hassans’ living room and listened to their story. Noor sat beside her husband Yusef, who spoke to us in Arabic while their son, Rayan, a young man with kind eyes and short hair, translated. If memory serves, Rayan was studying in the United States, which explained his excellent English.

Two years ago, Rayan’s brother, Nader, attended a rally at his university in support of Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike. Five weeks before we arrived, Israeli soldiers entered the home where we were now staying, at 2 a.m., and arrested him. Nader was taken to prison without charge, where he’ll likely remain without trial for up to seven months. At the end of his time, he could be released; or, he could be detained again for another seven months, without explanation. According to his family, this cycle can repeat indefinitely. The practice is both common and permitted under Israeli military law, which is still in effect in the West Bank, 53 years after the Six Day War.

Noor was quiet, eyes downcast, hands folded in her lap. This was a mother who had lost her son, taken in the middle of the night, who wasn’t sure if or when she would see him again. As I understood from them, adults over 18 are restricted from visiting prisoners: they plan to send their teenage son, Malik, to visit Nader and bring offerings of the family’s love and hope.

photo - Raking trees in an olive orchard, somewhere between Duma and Kafr Malik, West Bank, Palestine — Raking trees in an olive orchard, somewhere between Duma and Kafr Malik, West Bank, Palestine. *(photo from Kevin Keystone)*

In the short time we’ve been here, we’ve learned of the various ways in which Israel makes life nearly impossible for Palestinians: checkpoints; control over water, electricity, building and agricultural permits; the separation wall; demolition of homes and olive groves; restricted movement internally and internationally; arrest and imprisonment without trial; and, of course, the endless encroachment of settlements, which have been deemed illegal under international law by the United Nations Security Council and the International Court of Justice.

History, of course, is relevant to the present and, here, one can feel the weight of it, but it’s difficult to find a version that isn’t heavy with narrative. A briefing yesterday began with, “When Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank in 1967….” That’s true, but Israel occupied the territories as an outcome of the Six Day War, which raises questions of how it started and who provoked it. (The answer, as with most things Israel and Palestine, is hotly debated and too extensive to rehash here.) Yesterday, we didn’t talk about the Six Day War, nor the nuances of what came before it. The conflict doesn’t justify the occupation, but to leave out relevant context, to drop the “why” behind the “what,” I’m not sure that’s helpful, either.

On Birthright, we visited an Israeli military base. One of our trip’s soldiers was a pilot in the air force; in the common room, rows of flat, black, airplane-shaped medallions were pinned to a wall. Someone asked what they were. “Those are enemy aircraft,” the pilot said. “Each one marks a plane we shot down.”

The group erupted in applause. I froze, horrified. It reminded me of the story we tell at Passover, when the Heavenly Hosts rejoiced at the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. “My creatures are perishing,” God silenced them. “And you sing praises?”

* * *

It’s dark now. Stars are appearing in the night sky. Crickets chirp and trucks rumble low in the distance, no doubt carrying goods along labyrinthine backstreets to avoid Israeli-controlled roads, or the possibility of a checkpoint rejection or closure. So much time and life wasted. Tomorrow, we walk. It’s day two, I’m not sure where this road will lead. But all I can do is keep walking.