Palestine

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.

A testament to free speech

A new book on an incendiary topic turns out to be not quite as expected. The Conflict over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine Campus Debate, by Kenneth S. Stern, may be the most comprehensive assessment of the (at least) 20-year battle on North American campuses between pro-Israel and anti-Israel forces.

Jewish and pro-Israel readers picking up the work might anticipate a litany of horrors, anti-Zionist if not antisemitic incidents, brawls, screaming matches, vandalism, boycotts and the like. There is that. But Stern argues that the perception that campuses are aflame in anti-Zionist rage is simply not true. More, he offers proof that the pro-Israel side is far from innocent of engaging in disgraceful tactics, too. There is ill will and there are bad actors on both sides. Most unexpectedly, as much as the book is about the conflict, it is more than anything an exercise in applied ethics on the topic of free expression.

Stern is the director of the Bard Centre for the Study of Hate, an attorney and an author. For 25 years, he was the American Jewish Committee’s expert on antisemitism and he was a lead drafter of the Working Definition of Antisemitism. He is also, it appears, something close to a free speech purist. As such, he rails against efforts by Israel advocates who have organized campaigns to censure (and censor) anti-Israel voices. He doesn’t let the other side off easily, either, calling out acts of harassment like drowning out pro-Israel speakers with the “heckler’s veto.”

The book, from New Jewish Press, an imprint of University of Toronto Press, begins with an empirical assessment. In institutions of higher learning in the United States, Israel is an issue in very few, he writes.

When speaking with Jewish audiences, Stern asks for a show of hands to gauge perceptions on anti-Israel attitudes. He asks for guesses on how many American colleges have divested from Israel.

“Many seem surprised when I say ‘zero,’” he writes. “There are relatively few campuses where Israel is a burning issue, and every year the number of pro-Israel programs … is usually at least double the anti-Israel ones. There are over 4,000 campuses in the U.S. – in the 2017-18 academic year, 149 had anti-Israel activity.… So the campuses aren’t burning.”

He does not dismiss the extreme tensions on a few campuses, however.

“[O]n some campuses where anti-Israel activity is prominent, pro-Israel Jewish students may feel marginalized, dismissed or vilified, sometimes with antisemitic tropes.” Identity politics and the conflation of Jewish people with “whiteness” creates racial conflict. “[T]he labeling of Jews as white becomes a problem when shared victimhood becomes a sacred symbol, a badge of honour, a precondition to enter a club of the oppressed. Antisemitic discrimination is rendered invisible.”

Though bigotry may play a role in the discussion, Stern does not see constructive resolutions in neologisms like trigger warnings, safe spaces and microaggressions.

“Faculty should have the right to give trigger warnings if they want, but I never do, and I think the idea is a horrid one,” he writes. “I teach Mein Kampf. It’s disturbing – get over it. College should prepare one to be an adult, and there are no trigger warnings after graduation day. Why are we encouraging students to be ostriches? Shouldn’t they, rather, be learning how to navigate things that will likely unsettle them over the rest of their lives?”

He quotes CNN commentator Van Jones, a strong civil rights proponent, who opposes “safe spaces” on campus: “I don’t want you to be safe ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take the weights out of the gym. That’s the whole point of the gym.”

Stern contends a fundamental error has been made in defining terms.

“We want campuses that are open to expression – including, perhaps even especially, difficult and disturbing ideas – but which protect students from real harassment and intimidation. Hate speech codes were efforts to say that ideas themselves can harass and intimidate. Ideas can and should make one uncomfortable (a comfortable college education is a wasted college education). But harassment is something different.”

Strategically, he argues, trying to censor hateful ideas is self-defeating and advances hate agents by martyring them.

“By trying to censor, rather than expose and combat, speech the students perceived as hateful, they were actually helping the alt-right and white supremacists,” writes Stern. “It’s no coincidence that the white nationalists in recent years have wrapped their racist and antisemitic messages around the concept of free speech. Why would progressives allow these haters to steal the bedrock democratic principle of free speech, disingenuously saying that this is what their fight is about? By trying to deny alleged racists platforms, progressives are helping white supremacists recast their vile message as noble protection of a right.”

Another strategic failure, he argues, is buying into the Palestinian narrative’s good/evil dichotomy.

“Israel’s case is best understood as inherently complex and difficult; playing into the ‘all bad’ and ‘all good’ binary of the other side renders those complexities invisible,” he writes.

The conflict on campus spills over, of course. Israel has created a list of 20 organizations, those that urge boycotts of the country, for instance, and bars their members from entering the country. Stern sees this as counterproductive: “You don’t make the case that blacklists (especially of academics) are proper if your goal is to oppose blacklists. You are conceding the argument.”

He gives an example of an anti-Israel campus activist who defends his group’s refusal to meet with Zionists “over cookies and cake” because “you Jews, in all due respect, you wouldn’t sit down with Nazis for tea and cake.”

He also reflects on the “Standards of Partnership” adopted by Hillel International, the Jewish campus organization, which proscribe engaging with groups or individuals that deny Israel’s right to exist, or who delegitimize, demonize or apply a double standard Israel, who support BDS or who exhibit “a pattern of disruptive behaviour towards campus events or guest speakers or foster an atmosphere of incivility.”

Writes Stern: “For those who are not yet ideological soldiers, but want to learn more, and want to do it around their campus Hillel, what sense does it make that adults are telling them they can only bring in certain types of speakers? Yes, the adults defined BDS as hateful. But does it make sense to tell students they have to go elsewhere than the Jewish address on campus to hear about it firsthand from those who support it?”

The litany of bad behaviours on all sides of the ideological divide is likely to make readers of Stern’s book uneasy, whether the reader is Zionist or anti-Zionist. But it is a rare and uncompromising testament to free expression that should give genuine free speech advocates an uplift, particularly in an era when ideologically driven regulation of expression and ideas, especially on campuses, has left many advocates of core liberal, academic values feeling beleaguered.

Tolerance via playing soccer

A participant in Playing Fair, Leading Peace in Jaffa. (photo from Peres Center)

“I did not know I could play with Jews or talk to them. Now I want to and I can,” wrote an Arab middle school student whose school was one of 10 – five Jewish, five Arab – to participate in Playing Fair, Leading Peace, created by the Jaffa-based Peres Center for Peace and Innovation to unite Jewish and Arab Israeli children through soccer.

In 2018-2019, Playing Fair, Leading Peace engaged 300 fifth- to seventh-graders in Arab and Jewish sectors of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Kalansua, Kfar Saba, Beersheva and Tel Sheva. In each participating school, one class is matched with one class from the corresponding nearby school. Kids and their teachers are guided by two specially trained university students (one Jewish, one Arab) in five tolerance education and prep sessions held at their own school, and in five joint soccer matches on one another’s turf.

In these games, Arabs don’t play against Jews; each team mixes children from the hosting and visiting schools. And there are no referees; the children are given the responsibility of determining rules and mediating disputes.

“They need to communicate to solve issues during the game by themselves. This is a smart component of the program,” said Tamar Hay-Sagiv, director of the education for peace and innovation department at the Peres Center.

photo - Children in the Arab village of Kalansua with a poster stating, “We need diversity” and “We are all equal” in Hebrew and Arabic — Children in the Arab village of Kalansua with a poster stating, “We need diversity” and “We are all equal” in Hebrew and Arabic. *(photo from Peres Center)*

But it’s not an easy component, because one side speaks Hebrew and the other speaks Arabic. “We tackle the language issue by teaching through sports. They learn the language of ‘the other’ while they play,” said Hay-Sagiv.

Nor is it a simple matter to convince parents to allow cross-visits.

“There are fears and stereotypes to overcome,” acknowledged Hay-Sagiv. “We had one child in the south whose family was afraid for him to travel to a Bedouin school. It was a trust-building process between his parents and the head of the school, who gave us full support and made the family comfortable in allowing the visit. It’s always a challenge for Jewish schools to agree to travel to Arab communities, but the hospitality they receive is unbelievable.”

One child wrote on the evaluation form after the first visit: “Even after they prepared us, I was still afraid of them, but when I met them, they looked like us, only with different clothing.”

As for stereotypes, it’s not only about the Arab-Jewish divide but also about gender. “We’ve had girls thinking they are not allowed to play soccer,” said Hay-Sagiv. “We have to overcome that, too. We try to create a safe space for everyone that is fun and interactive.”

For the last 18 years, the Peres Center has used sports, specifically soccer, as a tool to break down barriers between youth, Hay-Sagiv told Israel21c.

The centre’s flagship project, Twinned Peace Sports Schools (TPSS), involves leadership training and mixed teams led by professional coaches. Britain’s Prince William kicked around a ball with the TPSS team in Jaffa during his visit to Israel last summer.

photo - Playing Fair, Leading Peace soccer match at a Jerusalem school — Playing Fair, Leading Peace soccer match at a Jerusalem school. *(photo from Peres Center)*

TPSS, started in 2002, is the first and longest-running initiative of its kind in the region. Hay-Sagiv said it “significantly influences Arab and Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian girls and boys to become agents of positive change in their community and around the world.”

The Peres Center sought a way to scale up this successful, but limited, peace-building-through-sports program in a more accessible and less expensive format that would also involve nonathletic children.

“Based on our experience, we thought it would be interesting to get into Jewish and Arab schools during school hours and engage full classrooms. This way, we can reach all the boys and girls, as well as their teachers,” said Hay-Sagiv. When the other children in the host school observe the mixed teams playing soccer together, “it’s unbelievable to see the reactions to this unusual sight. That also has an impact.”

Playing Fair, Leading Peace is supported by the Israel Football Association, which oversees Israel’s national football (soccer) team comprised of Jewish and Arab Israelis, and captained by Circassian-Israeli Muslim Bibras Natkho. The program also works with the National Union of Israeli Students (representing all Israeli universities) and the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation.

“Hopefully, next [school] year, we will double the number of participating schools,” said Hay-Sagiv.

She explained that fifth- to seventh-graders were chosen for the program “because we see this as a crucial age for exposing them to this type of experience. Verbally, they are well developed and they’re going into a tough age. You have enough time to work with them during school hours, and it’s still possible at this age to work with boys and girls together.”

Based on questionnaires distributed before and after the activity, Hay-Sagiv and her staff can see that the program effects changes in attitude.

“I want to feel with them exactly the way I feel with my friends,” wrote one child.

“I hope that we will become one family that does joint activities in togetherness and tolerance,” wrote another.

Hay-Sagiv isn’t surprised by this impact, having seen the inroads made over the years by Twinned Peace Sports Schools.

“We’re traveling to Poland to organize a sports tournament in Warsaw with Israelis, Poles, Germans, Hungarians and Russians to mark 80 years since World War II, hopefully in September,” she said. “We are thinking of bringing a mixed Jewish and Arab team from Israel.”

For more information, visit peres-center.org/en/the-organization/projects/sports/playing-fair.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

History through Eva’s eyes

Gabriella Goliger’s Eva Salomon’s War is an intriguing novel. (photo by Ben Welland))

Award-winning Canadian author Gabriella Goliger has written Eva Salomon’s War (Bedazzled Ink Publishing, 2018), an intriguing novel set between the rise of the German Nazi state and the founding of the state of Israel – two complex historical phenomena whose aftershocks we are still experiencing. But, for Eva Salomon, those huge events are mainly engines moving her own story forward from timid German-Jewish adolescent to courageous Israeli young woman. The novel takes us through many intricacies of the competing historical strands that form the background of Eva’s life. Readers familiar with various bits and pieces of the history can connect the dots through her eyes.

Written as a first-person bildungsroman, the book opens as the Nazis close in on the Jews, who are wondering which of the many possible responses to embrace. Should they stay and resist? Stay, pray and keep their heads down? Should they emigrate, and, if so, where? Should they join the movement to build a Zionist workers’ state in Palestine? So many choices, so many unknowns, and so much peril attached to each decision.

Eva’s beloved older sister, Liesel, immigrates to a socialist kibbutz in the Galilee. Sixteen-year-old Eva and her embittered, widowed father migrate to Tel Aviv. We know what happens to the relatives who feel too old to make the trip.

The character of Eva is loosely based on Goliger’s own aunt. Letters between Eva and Liesel give us many illustrative details of Jewish life in Palestine in those years. In Breslau, they had enjoyed middle-class lives. In Palestine, they quickly have to learn working-class skills and they have to adapt to their shabby new realities among people with no time for pity or introspection.

Kibbutz life is physically harsh but relieved by the high level of ideological commitment between the comrades: “I sleep in a tent and the food is plain, but I never have to think about where my next meal is coming from. Everything is communal and allotted to me, down to my shoes and socks.” Eva flees the misery of life in her father’s tiny flat and finds a place to live with Malka, a Hungarian Jewish seamstress who helps her accommodate to her reduced circumstances.

Malka transforms Eva from a ragged miserable waif to a well-dressed young woman who can make her way in the vibrant, uncertain Jewish Palestinian world. Eva learns the meaning of “ein breirah” – no choice – a theme resonating not only throughout the novel but throughout the decades to the present day as one formative part of Israeli Jewish culture.

Eva finds work as an ozerit (cleaning lady) and starts putting together a life of sorts. She finds a music shop that affords her a bit of pleasure – “my refuge, my paradise” – phonograph records feeding her delight in classical music and her longing for romance. Fittingly, it is where she meets Constable Duncan Rees of His Majesty’s Palestine Police. Their romance encapsulates many conflicting layers of identity, culture, desire and belonging.

Throughout the novel, most of the characters are rent by doubts and competing loyalties. Only the fanatics of all stripes know certainty. The portrayal of Eva’s unbending Orthodox father, seemingly bereft of feeling for his wayward daughter, I found puzzling. We never see anything through his eyes, never understand his inner realities.

Eva is at war with her father, with all rigid religious and political belief systems, with her situation of loving the wrong person, and with her own competing claims of duty. Her personal war intersects with the fighting in Europe, the fighting between Arabs and Jews, the infighting between the various Zionist factions and, crucially, with the growing resistance to the British presence in Palestine.

Eva is a Jewish refugee. Duncan is charged with upholding British laws controlling Jewish immigrants. Despite the growing cultural-personal-political tensions, Eva enjoys their romance. She experiences pleasure and the delights of physical intimacy, which she keeps secret as much as possible. “The more he was my secret, the tighter, I felt, was our bond.” Their emotional intimacy is harder to sustain. One feels it can’t last and I wondered throughout how Goliger was going to handle it (no spoiler here).

The British White Paper on Palestine brings it all to a head. Tensions explode into violence all over the land, from many different directions, aimed at “traitors” to all the intersecting causes. For each faction, “we” are highly individuated and the others are an undifferentiated “they.” Eva, essentially an apolitical person, is helplessly caught up in the sectarian brutality.

One can’t help but read the novel through the prism of the tragic unfolding of events since 1948. Goliger vividly illustrates the human urgencies propelling Arabs and Jews in all directions, and the emotional realities behind all the ideologies.

Near the end, I was reminded of Anne Frank’s “In spite of everything, I still believe people are good at heart.” Eva reflects, “I believe a better world is dawning because … because ein breirah. I must.”

Deborah Yaffe lives in Victoria, where she formerly taught in the women’s studies department of the University of Victoria. An active secular Jewish feminist since reading Elana Dykewomon and Irena Klepfisz in the 1980s, she is grateful for the many Israeli individuals and organizations working against Jewish persecution of Arab Israelis and Palestinians.

Abbas more isolated

U.S. President Donald Trump with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Presidential Palace, Bethlehem, May 2017. (photo by the White House)

Mahmoud Abbas has had enough. Thirteen years into his four-year term as elected leader of the Palestinian people, he has nothing of substance to show for his efforts and his friends are abandoning him.

On Sunday, his frustration was on full display during a two-and-a-half-hour speech.

Things have been building up lately for Abbas and his Fatah faction and, at a meeting of the Palestinian Central Council, he finally let loose.

Naturally, he focused on Israel, which he declared a European colonialist enterprise and denied Jewish connection to the land.

“Israel is a colonialist project that has nothing to do with Jews,” Abbas said. “The Jews were used as a tool under the concept of the Promised Land – call it whatever you want. Everything has been made up.”

Abbas, who has a doctorate in history, has taken a creative approach the discipline from the start, when his dissertation discounted the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis and contended that European Jews were collaborators in their own genocide in order to advance the cause of Zionism.

Of course, Abbas also railed against the U.S. president for his announced intention to move the American embassy to Jerusalem. Abbas accused Donald Trump of destroying the prospects for peace.

“Yekhreb Beitak,” Abbas said in the general direction of Trump. According to the Associated Press, the curse literally translates as “may your house be demolished.”

“In colloquial Palestinian Arabic,” AP explained, “the phrase can have different connotations, from a harsh to a casual insult, but its use in a widely watched speech seemed jarring – and could exacerbate his already fragile relationship with an American president who is particularly averse to criticism.”

If the U.S. president is a notorious hothead, that’s exactly how Abbas appeared Sunday, but certainly not without reason.

What must hurt more than anything is that Abbas now sees those who have been the Palestinians’ historic allies softening their resolve. As a New York Times investigation earlier this month indicated, while Arab leaders from Egypt to Saudi Arabia were making appropriate noises in public about Trump’s Jerusalem gambit, behind the scenes they are giving every indication that they won’t expend political energy on the matter.

The irony is clear – and for Abbas and his allies it must be especially painful.

The welfare of Palestinians has never been a genuine priority for the Arab world, even as they have propelled the Palestinian cause to the top of the global agenda, paralyzing the United Nations in the process. For Arab leaders, Palestinians have always been little more than a battering ram with which to land blow after blow against the Zionist entity. Palestinian life under Israeli occupation and autocratic leaders is filled with small and large indignities.

Now that geopolitics suggests Israel is not so much the regional threat that Iran poses, the Palestinians, once a useful weapon for the Arabs in their 70-year confrontation with Israel, are being cast aside.

Abbas’s obvious frustration Sunday suggests there may finally be a change afoot to the status quo that has been unsatisfactory for Israelis and even more so for Palestinians. What the future looks like for the Palestinians – and for their relations with Israel – remains unclear.

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Note: The headline of this editorial has been changed. In the Jan. 19 newspaper, the piece ran as “Abbas rightly irked,” which misled some readers to think that we agreed with Mahmoud Abbas’s remarks. We in no way condone his abandonment of historical fact, his inhumane accusation that Jews were complicit in the Holocaust or the many other false and immoral statements in his two-and-a-half-hour diatribe.