Today was the second day of our trip. After visiting the Australian Ambassador, Andrea Faulkner we went to Jaffo for a tour with Zochrot http://www.zochrot.org/index.php?lang=english. The guide was Tamar from Germany who moved to Israel twenty years ago. She talked about Jaffo, the largest Arab city in Palestine before 1948, with a current population of 48,000 of which one third are Palestinian. As we moved through the streets we were reminded that each remembrance of history is a selective one. There was a plaque on the wall to mark an 18th Century mikvah and its reclaiming by the Jews of Libya. The Arab houses on which the plaque stands are either empty or consist of an artist’s quarter but the life has been drained out of the city. Expensive developments with secured entrances are lining the seashore and once-again displacing and dislocating the formation of communities. Tamar came to this work through her initial work researching German Jewish history. Zochrot recognises that where most Israeli towns and villages sit today, there was a Palestinian people and a town in their place. To this end they go and put up signs acknowledging where a Palestinian town was and how many inhabitants it had. Apparently the signs do not survive long before being torn up. Zochrot have a policy of supporting a one state solution- binationalism- which means that they do not want to preserve the Jewish nature of the state, rather they want Israel/Palestine to be a ‘country for all its inhabitants’. I don’t think that binationalism is the only possible outcome from their position. It is possible to advocate for the two state solution and simultaneously recognise those Palestinian villages on which the State of Israel was built. This may also include the need to bring an offering of compensation in addition to the recognition that any reconciliation will require.
After having some time off in Tel Aviv/Jaffo (I had a beautiful swim) we went to Tel Aviv University to meet with Professor Eyal Naveh http://www.idi.org.il/sites/english/AboutIDI/Staff/Pages/BioEyalNaveh.aspx
Most notably he has been involved in an interesting and controversial project of writing a textbook for Israeli schools and learning institutions that involves the dual narrative of the Jewish Israelis and Palestinian people. He said that we can be captive in our own narratives and he sees recognition of the other as even having a story as a first and necessary step in a process of reconciliation. His expertise is in History and Education and he proposed that each person put their skills and passions towards reconciliation, and that this way, through the process of writing dual narrative history books, is the way that he can contribute. The books were written through a process of workshops between six Jewish and six Palestinian teachers. Then each person had to read the others’ drafts and then another Jewish-Palestinian group looked over both the drafts. Two main preconditions for accepting the narrative of the other were (1) that one group doesn’t impose on the narrative of the other and (2) that the narrative is not inciteful or offensive. He pointed out though how tricky this is when the nature of each narrative often delegitimizes the other. He acknowledged the difference in tone between the two narratives (the Israeli being more self-critical and the Palestinian using history in a more emotive and victim-oriented way) and attributed that mainly to the asymmetry in power relations, that Palestine is still under occupation and that Israel has had over 60 years of independence. The book has caused a lot of controversy which I won’t go in to. See http://www.religionnews.com/index.php?/rnstext/professor_tries_to_teach_peace_two_pages_at_a_time/
We ended a full day with a visit to Kever Rahel (Tomb of Rachel). We just read about her in the weekly parsha (Torah portion). Because of the separation barrier (the Wall) in Bethlehem, and in order to protect Jewish visitors to this sacred site, the way in to the site and the site itself is surrounded by the large wall as an enclave inside Palestine with almost sole Jewish access. This site is considered to be an important place for prayer especially for women wanting to conceive (and for healing) because of Rachel’s prayer and struggle with her own fertility. Its hard for me as a modern feminist to connect to the sacred sites and separate them from their political context as well as from the ultra- Orthodox domination of them. What that meant for me last night was that while the men were there and singing, the women were silent. I wanted to invite my co-leader, Ilana Meallem to join me in song but I knew that women’s voices in song would not have been received well in that space. The group also got a big fright when on our way to the bus from there a loud voice boomed from the tall watch tower that overlooks the Tomb and the wall. The soldier was just asking us to wait for the bus and not to walk but in the confusion the experience was quite surreal.
(After the first day my entry got lost because internet connection got lost but I’ll try to pick it up in the next few days)
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