Stop ignoring anti-Jewish racism

Last Saturday I went to the protest against asset sales organized by Aotearoa Not For Sale. I was marching with my friend Maia, discussing the latest episode of The Good Wife in between chants of ‘hey hey ho ho/John Key has got to go’.

Halfway up Willis St we overheard a guy behind us talking: ‘This is all because John Key is a money-hungry Jew.’ Maia immediately turned around and told him that he was being anti-Semitic and that it wasn’t ok (she’s great like that). The guy explained that she didn’t understand the historical context, that ‘they took over this country with their money’, before finally giving up and telling her ‘you must be Jewish’ (incidentally, she isn’t. Not that it’s relevant’).

By that point I’d already walked away. I was in no mood to hear about how I control the world’s money and am personally responsible for the economic recession.

This wasn’t the first time that anti-Jewish racism has cropped up at Aotearoa Not For Sale events. Last year a guy named Nathan Symington joined an anti-asset sales march in Auckland holding a skateboard with swastikas chalked on it. The same man was later charged with the racist vandalism of the Symonds St Jewish cemetery.

When an Auckland activist noticed that Symington had clicked ‘attending’ on a facebook page for an Aotearoa Not For Sale street party, she commented and asked the organisers to make a clear statement that racism and fascism weren’t welcome at this event. She was ignored and her comment was deleted. (I’m told that at the party itself one of the organisers did make a statement condemning racism. I don’t want to imply that everyone involved in ANFS ignores racism.)

There were similar instances of anti-Jewish racism at Occupy spaces in 2011, and on the facebook pages of several of the Occupy groups as well.

The campaign against asset sales is broad. It includes socialists who argue for nationalization of resources, anarchists who argue for collectivization of the means of production, and tino rangatiratanga activists who view asset sales as a continuation of colonization. It also includes nationalists, racists and conspiracy theorists.

Aotearoa Not For Sale organisers can’t be held personally responsible for the actions of every single person who attends one of their protests. But they do need to take responsibility for ensuring that racism isn’t tolerated—or worse, nurtured.

One way to do that is to stop the nationalist rhetoric. Campaigns against privatization have a nasty habit of appealing to populist nationalism, because it’s an easy way of galvanizing support. That slope is both slippery and dangerous. Its logical conclusion is in racism and xenophobia. It’s essential that arguments against the privatization of public assets are based on an ethic of economic and social justice, not nationalism.

Another way to take responsibility is to take a strong and explicit stance against racism. Not just against Jews, but against Māori, Pacific islanders, Asians, Arabs—anybody. Opposition to racism needs to be one of the central tenets of anti-privatisation activism, and it needs to be made explicit and constantly reiterated. When people hold racist signs or make racist comments at protests they should be asked to leave. When racist behavior manifests it should be publicly condemned, not swept under the rug for fear of ‘damaging the movement’.

Nothing divides social movements quite as effectively as oppression ignored. If Aotearoa Not For Sale continues to ignore anti-Jewish racism, it will split the movement between those who are willing to tolerate racism, and those who cannot.

So stop ignoring anti-Jewish racism.

Keeping the thing going

I feel like I need to preface this post with a disclaimer: over the last year I have become extremely jaded and cynical. So it’s possible that my inability to get excited about parliament passing the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) bill has more to do with my current pessimism than with anything else. But I’ve been turning it over in my mind for the last week and I think I’ve finally worked out why I feel so uneasy about it.

I also recommend this much more interesting analysis by Neon, Anne Russel, LudditeJourno and Anthea.

When I was ten I wrote a letter to the president asking him to legalise same-sex marriage. Nearly two decades, and one inter-continental migration later, the government of the country I now live in did exactly that. Instead of feeling excited, I just felt sad and frustrated that even something as small and symbolic as the ability to marry requires such a long struggle.

All parliament did was change one discriminatory law, and suddenly everyone’s gushing about how proud they are to be a New Zealander. To me it feels like we’ve been given the kind of small-but-very-loud concession that makes it easy to pretend that institutional transphobia and homophobia aren’t a reality anymore [‘we gave you marriage rights, what more do you want?’]

This law change is an easy thing for parliament to give us, because it doesn’t cost anything. As much as homophobes like to complain that their marriages will be ruined if queers can get married too, the truth is that legalising same-sex marriage doesn’t take any resources away from heterosexuals. It doesn’t require any tax payers’ money. Actually it will probably be good for the economy, and it definitely makes it easier for the state to regulate people’s relationships.

On the other hand, there are so many things the government could do that would make a huge positive impact on the lives of trans and queer folk in New Zealand. But these things would all require money. Which means they will be much much harder to get. I’m not saying that legalising same-sex marriage was a waste of time—it may not be important to me personally, but I support other people’s right to marry—but it’s important that we don’t view it as the holy grail of queer liberation. It’s really more of a small stepping-stone on the way there.

Seeing how ecstatic everyone around me was when the bill passed did quite a bit to melt my cynicism. Still, I kept thinking of Sojourner Truth’s famous speech to the American Equal Rights Association in 1867, ‘I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.’

So in the interest of keeping the thing going while it is stirring, I started brainstorming a list of demands. These mostly came out of a good rant I had with Neon. I’m sure there’s plenty more others could add to this list.

• Resources to address queer and trans youth suicide
• Anti-homophobia & transphobia education in all schools
• Income support for queer & trans youth who’ve been rejected by their families
• No criminalization of street workers
• Resources to make street work safer
• No transpeople incarcerated in the wrong gender prison (this is a very reformist demand, ultimately I’d like to abolish prisons altogether).
• Education support for people who left school early due to transphobic/homophobic bullying
• Accept queer and trans asylum seekers
• Gender neutral toilets in all public places
• Access to appropriate medical care
• Adoption rights for same-sex and poly families
• Legal recognition of poly relationships
• Educational programmes on how to create trans and queer friendly workplaces.
• Media education packs on how to responsibly report on trans and queer issues.

Good riddance to 2012

It is already the fifth day of 2013 and I’m sitting in my office re-reading the post I wrote at the end of 2011. What can I say, that was such an exciting, exhausting year that I’d forgotten most of it. I spent 2011 gallivanting around the world doing a million different things. Not necessarily fun things. I think I was pretty drained by the end of it.

Now I’m trying to remember what happened in 2012, and my mind’s more or less blank. 2012 was a pretty rubbish year for me. I decided to settle down, move into a rent-paying flat, and study fulltime. I felt like I was going undercover in the Muggle world.

In the long run it was probably a good experience for me to step outside my anarchist bubble. At least, I’m sure in the future I’ll look back and think it was a good experience. Lefties love to complain about how we need to stop being so insular and engage more with the mainstream (whatever the hell that is), but this year really made me appreciate the importance of having spaces and communities where people actively oppose oppression. Radical left spaces don’t always live up to that, but at least there’s a shared understanding that they should.

That’s the self-involved component of this post. So on to the actually interesting things that happened last year:

2012 finally concluded the long and ludicrous saga of the Operation Eight court case. Rangi Kemara and Tame Iti are still in prison, and state attacks on Māori are continuing. So the struggle is far from over.

There was also the mass hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners, in protest of Israel’s administrative detention policies. There are still prisoners who are hunger striking, including Samer Issawi, who’s been hunger striking for over 150 days. Again, the struggle is far from over.

It made me fantasise a lot about alternate timelines where the world doesn’t suck as much.

Another thing that happened last year was that ridiculous Kony 2012 campaign. I still haven’t watched the actual video, but it did trigger some useful discussions about accountability of NGOs, and their role in perpetuating colonialism.

That war everyone was expecting for all of 2011 did happen in 2012. Israeli forces killed 170 Palestinians in Gaza in under a fortnight. They named it Operation Pillar of Defense in English, but in Hebrew it was Pillar of Cloud, which apparently is some biblical reference that I’m not a good enough Jew to get.

The Palestinian Authority finally got observer state status at the UN. I don’t know whether or not that’s a good thing. It’s a huge symbolic victory, and it gives Palestine the right to take Israel to the International Criminal Court. But it could also entrench the 1967 borders and endanger the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their pre-1948 homes.

There was a lot of organising around asset sales and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. I’m opposed to both, but I also feel incredibly uneasy with the nationalist rhetoric used by anti-asset sales and anti-TPPA activists. Especially after finding out that a neo-Nazi participated in an Aotearoa Not For Sale march. You can’t separate the struggle for economic justice from the struggle against colonisation and racism.

I’m trying to think of exciting new music that I discovered in 2012 and the only band I can think of is the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

Feel free to leave your music recommendations in the comments section.

On the other hand I went to see four movies at the cinema last year, which is a lot for me. Here’s my 2012 film reviews:

The Avengers: so did not pass the Bechdel test. WTF Joss? I expect better from you.

The Hunger Games: was a perfectly fine movie, but really did not live up to the book. I am very emotionally invested in the book.

Cabin in the Woods: was so fucking amazing. Joss, you’re a genius, I totally forgive you for The Avengers

Five Broken Cameras: is a very moving documentary and you should watch it.

I read a lot of books last year. My picks are Leslie Feinberg’s Transgender Warriors, Grace Paley’s The Little Disturbances of Man, Ali Abunimah’s One Country and The Hunger Games trilogy.

Towards the end of the year my grandmother died. I want to write something about her life, and what she meant to me, but I’m not quite ready yet.

I feel like I should have something inspiring to say about my hopes and aspirations for 2013. I’m actually feeling pretty jaded at the moment. I’ve decided my goal for 2013 is to find a way to feel optimistic and inspired about revolutionary social change. I figure if you set small goals, you’re less likely to be disappointed. So here’s to feeling hopeful about feeling hopeful.

Happy (belated) new year. Go forth and make revolution.

No to anti-Semitism, no to Israel

I love the Symonds St cemetery. I love that it’s right in the middle of the city where anyone can enter, not locked up behind a fence. I love that a Jewish cemetery in a mostly non-Jewish country can be in the middle of the city where anyone can enter.

I love sitting in the cemetery and reading the inscriptions on the headstones. It’s comforting reading Hebrew in New Zealand. It makes me feel less alien here. I don’t know anything about the lives of the people buried in that cemetery, but it’s reassuring to see that Jews have a history in this country—as much as any other Tau Iwi anyway.

I imagine that’s exactly why neo-Nazis targeted the Symonds St cemetery. To them, Jewish people are not part of New Zealand society (along with other non-White, non-hetero people). Attacking a 19th century Jewish cemetery is a way of attacking Jewish existence in New Zealand.

It’s hard to describe how I felt when I read about it. It’s not the first time something like this has happened. In 2004 the Jewish cemeteries in Karori and Makara were vandalised by neo-Nazis. So it’s always at the back of my mind, the possibility of anti-Semitic attacks. But that didn’t stop the shock that hit me this afternoon. It’s the same shock I felt the first time I saw swastika jewelry being sold at a New Zealand shop. It took me a few minutes to notice I was shaking.

The people who attacked the cemetery spray painted swastikas and 88s on Jewish headstones. They also sprayed ‘fuck Israel’ on a grave. Why spray anti-Israel slogans in a cemetery that pre-dates the Israeli state’s existence?

I am not a Zionist and I don’t support Israel. I support freedom and equality for everyone living in historic Palestine and I support the right of Palestinian refugees to return home. I don’t think that ‘fuck Israel’ is an anti-Semitic slogan—except for when it’s spray painted on a dead Jew’s grave.

Whoever vandalised these graves wasn’t acting out of solidarity with Palestinians. White supremacists attack Muslims just as much as they attack Jews. But anti-Semites are perfectly happy to hijack Palestinians’ struggle for liberation from a racist state, when it serves their racist agenda. That’s something the global Palestine solidarity movement has been addressing recently after a Palestine solidarity organisation tweeted an anti-Semitic video. Both Bekah Wolf and Ali Abunimah have written about it. The discussion on anti-Semitism in the Palestine solidarity movement lead over 100 Palestinian activists to sign a statement condemning anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Zionism and all other bigotry.

Anti-Semitic attacks on diaspora Jewish communities hurt both Jews and Palestinians. They reinforce the Zionist claim that Jews aren’t safe unless Israel remains a Jewish-supremacist state—and that this justifies the horrific consequences for Palestinians and other non-Jews. Anti-Semitism and Zionism are both racist ideologies and they reinforce each other.

I’m sad that the response to these racist attacks is to increase security, including building a $250,000 security fence around the cemetery. We should be addressing the root of the problem, which is to say, we should be addressing anti-Semitism and racism.

I’m relieved that so far no one’s attempted to exploit the situation to garner support for Israel.

Defending Jewish people’s right to live in peace anywhere in the world is part of the wider struggle against racism and colonialism, in Palestine and elsewhere. Conflating Jews with Israel serves anti-Semites like the people who spray painted swastikas on 130-year-old graves, and it serves Zionists like the IDF soldiers who terrorise West Bank Palestinians. It doesn’t serve anyone’s struggle for liberation.

Remembering Sabra and Shatila on Erev Rosh Hashana

Today is Erev Rosh Hashanah—Jewish New Year’s Eve. Traditionally it’s a time to atone for the sins of the previous year. In a secular sense, it’s a time to think about things you’ve done wrong, people you’ve hurt, and to try to fix those wrongs.

Today is also the 30^th anniversary of the massacre of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. At the time Israelis were shocked by the bloodbath. 300,000 people protested against it in Tel Aviv. I’m not old enough to remember it, but when my mother talks about it I can see the impact it had on her. I’m sure the massacre was a wake up call for so many Israeli Jews about the brutal nature of the Israeli military.

The thing about being in a position of privilege is: even after you receive a wake up call, it’s still pretty easy to get back to sleep. Thirty years later, it doesn’t seem like the majority of Israeli Jews have taken on the lessons of Sabra and Shatila. Every day I read another story of horrific violence committed by the IDF. I wonder how much worse things have to get before Israeli-Jews wake up and stay awake.

I don’t have anything else to say about it. There’s not a lot to be said about a massacre of several thousand people. But I wanted to share this poem by Israeli poet Dahlia Ravikovitch, translated by Chana and Ariel Bloch.

You Can’t Kill a Baby Twice

By the sewage puddles of Sabra and Shatila,
there you transported human beings
in impressive quantities
From the world of the living to the world
of eternal light.

Night after night.
First they shot,
they hanged,
then they slaughtered with their knives.
Terrified women climbed up
on a ramp of earth, frantic:
‘They’re slaughtering us there,
in Shatila.’

A thin crust of moon
over the camps.
Our soldiers lit up the place with searchlights
till it was bright as day.
‘Back to the camp,
beat it!’ a soldier yelled at
the screaming women from Sabra and Shatila.
He was following orders.
And the children already lying in puddles of filth,
their mouths gaping,
at peace.
No one will harm them.
You can’t kill a baby twice.

And the moon grew fuller and fuller
till it became a round loaf of gold.

Our sweet soldiers
wanted nothing for themselves.
All they ever asked
was to come home
safe.

In any war between the coloniser and the colonised, support the oppressed

San Francisco buses have recently started displaying these ads:

 

 

 

 

 

 

At first I thought this was (brilliant) satire. I mean, American Freedom Defense Initiative sounds like something George Orwell would make up. Alas, it is a real thing.

I can’t help thinking these ads have a lot to teach us about Western White people’s support for Israel. The alternate text for them could have been ‘Indigenous sovereignty anywhere is a threat to colonisers everywhere’.

It seems that the aim of these ads is to get White American people to identify with Jewish-Israelis by equating Palestinians with Indigenous American people. Inadvertently these ads illustrate the connection between Western settler-colonialism (for instance in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), and Zionist settler-colonialism in Palestine. In all these countries, Indigenous struggles for sovereignty threaten existing power structures. In all these countries there’s an ethnically privileged group who are terrified of having to stop their exploitation of Indigenous resources, and having to give back what was stolen.

One of the most frustrating ideas I’ve encountered while working with Western pro-Palestine activists is that Israel is somehow an exceptional state, that it is different from other colonial states. Once, at a Palestine teach-in, a Pākehā man spent half an hour explaining to me why I shouldn’t compare New Zealand colonialism to Israeli colonialism. (According to him, Māori were lucky that Europeans introduced them to universal human rights values.)

The idea that Israel is somehow special is a Zionist idea. Zionists argue that the Israeli state doesn’t have to meet basic minimum human rights standards, like legal equality for all its citizens, because it is special. That’s not an idea Palestine solidarity activists should be reinforcing.

I realise I’m not making any profound statement by pointing out that Israel is a colonial state. Many people have pointed this out in the past. For many Palestine solidarity activists in Western countries (both Indigenous people and those who are part of colonising groups), this activism is part of a wider struggle against colonialism and imperialism.

But I’ve also encountered people who use an inverted form of the rhetoric employed by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (I still can’t type that with a straight face). Where Zionists initiatives try to get White Western people to identify with Jewish-Israelis, pro-Palestine activists try to get White Western people to dis-identify with Jewish-Israelis by situating Israel as inherently incompatible with the principles for which the West stands—democracy, equality and freedom. I agree that Israel is not compatible with these principles. But I don’t think Western governments are either.

I’ve often heard Americans complain that support for Israel is inconsistent with the ethics on which the USA was founded. The USA was founded on the genocide of its Indigenous people and the slavery of African people. Those aren’t just historical atrocities that are disconnected from today’s American society—the USA continues to be a racist and colonial country. Support for Israel is utterly consistent with that.

Denying the colonial nature of Western states does real harm to Indigenous people who are suffering under colonisation. It also does harm to the struggle for Palestinian liberation. This is something that Mike Krebs articulates really well in this article:

If Israel is held accountable for its crimes against Indigenous people on the world stage, Canada has a greater risk of meeting the same fate. It can’t allow these precedents to be set, and thus it benefits from ensuring that the UN and its various bodies are kept weak and unable to uphold international law.

He’s talking specifically about Canada, the country that colonised his people’s lands, but what he says is equally relevant to other settler-colonial states. I recommend reading the entire article.

The San Francisco bus ads were quickly corrected:

 

 

 

 

This picture sums it up pretty succinctly.

This is our darkest timeline

May started off so promisingly. On the 9^th, it was announced that Emily Bailey, Rangi Kemara, Tame Iti and Urs Signer would not be retried on the charge of belonging to an organised criminal group. It was a victory, albeit a tiny one. Four and a half years of court battles, economic hardship and uncertainty were finally coming to an end.

Then on May 15 Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoners Support Association, announced that the hunger striking Palestinian prisoners had reached an agreement with the Israel Prison Service. Among other things, prisoners in solitary confinement would be allowed to rejoin general population, family visits from Gaza would be resumed and all administrative detainees would be released at the end of their current sentence (as opposed to having their detention extended which is what often happens).

The prisoners’ hunger strike was supposed to be ending, before anyone died. That day I was so happy I was dancing around my kitchen singing Pet Shop Boys songs.

I’d convinced myself that May was a lucky month and that only good things could happen.

On May 24 I was looking forward to celebrating the Urewera Four not being sentenced to prison time. I figured that they’d get fines or suspended sentences. I’d interpreted the stay of proceedings as a sign that the crown was tired of the whole shenanigan and would try to resolve it as quickly as possible. Boy was I counting my anarchist chickens.

Justice Rodney Hansen sentenced Rangi and Tame to two and a half years in prison. Emily and Urs will most likely be sentenced to home detention, though we won’t know until June 21. Justice Hansen was very explicit about the reason for the harsh sentence, ‘in effect a private militia was being established. That is a frightening prospect in our society; undermining of our democratic institutions and anathema to our way of life’. He even added that ‘Some of the participants held extreme anarchist views’.

In other words, Rangi and Tame weren’t sentenced for the crimes of which a jury found them guilty. They were sentenced for other, imaginary crimes, which they hypothetically may have desired to commit. They were sentenced for their political opinions, for their opposition to the New Zealand state.

The next day Addameer reported that IPS had already violated the terms of the agreement with Palestinian prisoners. At least two prisoners are still on hunger strike. Mahmoud Sarsak, a soccer player incarcerated under the ‘unlawful combatant’ law, has been hunger striking for around 90 days. It’s almost impossible to get information on his current state. Akram Rikhawi, who has been held in the Ramleh prison medical center since 2004 because of his medical condition, has been hunger striking for around 65 days.

Meanwhile the anti-African racism in Israel has reached new heights of fascist.

Basically the whole world is going to shit.

Last year I hear Tariq Ali speak at Auckland University. He presented an interesting thought experiment: what if the Ottoman Empire had allied itself with the Allies instead of with the Central Powers in World War One? What if the Middle East had never been carved up between France and Britain? What would the region look like today?

At the time I thought it was an interesting question, but it wasn’t until Jarvis pointed it out that I realised: This is our darkest timeline.

In the prime timeline, the Middle East was never controlled by Western colonial powers. It was never divided into arbitrary nation-states. In that timeline the people of the Middle East live freely and move freely.

In the prime timeline the Nazis never gained power in Germany. In that timeline there was no Third Reich, no World War Two, no Final Solution. In that timeline the idea of human beings being gassed in death factories is only found in obscure dystopian science fiction films.

In the prime timeline Jewish society continued to flourish in eastern and northern Europe. There is now a rich Yiddish culture, expressed in literature, film, television, comic books and even video games.

In the prime timeline the communist movements of the 20^th century didn’t degenerate into authoritarian regimes. In that timeline the communist movements of Europe formed alliances with the decolonization movements of Asia, Africa, South America and the Pacific. In that timeline those movements grew and learned and evolved. They overthrew colonial regimes. They abolished capitalist economic relationships and created new economic systems based on collective control of resources. Alongside, they created new forms of political organization based on the free association of people. There are no states or borders in that timeline.

In the prime timeline the trans, queer and feminist movements were a welcome and integral part of revolutionary movements. In that timeline gender and sexual diversity are now taken for granted.

In the prime timeline Mahmoud Sarsak is outside playing soccer right now. There is no Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike in that timeline. There are no Palestinians in Israeli prisons. There are no Israeli prisons. There is no Israel. There is a significant Jewish community living in Palestine, made up of people who migrated there from other parts of the Middle East, from Europe, and from Africa. They live peacefully with the Palestinian majority.

In the prime timeline Rangi and Tame are not in a New Zealand prison. In that timeline there is no New Zealand. In that timeline all land stolen by the crown was returned to iwi and hapū in the twentieth century. Pākehā and other tauiwi have integrated into Māori society while retaining their own languages, traditions and cultures. In that timeline aotearoa is a real democracy.

Something went wrong in the prime timeline. Maybe somebdy traveled back in time and stepped on a bug, or maybe they inadvertently conjured a demon who cursed the world into an parallel reality. Somehow we ended up in this, our darkest timeline.

In the darkest timeline colonial powers build bigger and fancier bombs. In this timeline land and natural resources are continually stolen from indigenous people. In this timeline people are forced to sell their labour to avoid starvation. In this timeline people’s sexuality and gender identity are controlled and policed. In this timeline those who fight back are locked up in prisons. In this timeline people are forced to resort to violence to protect themsleves and their communities.

But never you fear, all is not lost. By the end of the story the heroes always find a way to reverse the spell. They’ll go back in time and stop themselves going back in time and then everything will be back the way it’s supposed to be. We will return to the prime timeline.

If they don’t, if we are doomed to remain in this timeline for all eternity, then I guess we better keep organizing and fighting like hell to make this the kind of world we want to live in. Even in the darkest timeline.

Where do I stand on Palestinian land?

May 15 is Nakba Day, the anniversary of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. An ethnic cleansing that was an integral part of establishing a Zionist state on Palestinian land.

It’s easy to live your whole life on colonised land and not think of the history that lead you to be there. Part of the colonial project is creating a culture where members of the colonizing group never have to think of how they are implicated in colonisation.

This is something I wrote about the colonial history of the village I grew up in—a history I never thought about when I lived there. It’s from issue #2 of Not Afraid of Ruins zine, which you can download here.

***

When I visited Al Walaja, the locals took us to see what they reckon is the oldest olive tree in all of Palestine. Olive trees live for centuries—there are olive trees in Palestine that are estimated to be 3000 years old.

I never really thought about the trees around me before—olive, citrus, pine and palm trees. I never thought about how old they were, and who planted them where they are, and who used to stand under them the same way I do.

When I was a kid I lived in Kfar Netter, a small moshav[1] (village) near Natanya, in the Hof HaSharon region of Israel. We had a six dunam[2] property full of citrus and other fruit trees, excellent for climbing. It was an awesome place to be a kid. Right in front of our house was a ginormous olive tree, as big as the one I saw in Walaja. In summer it was the centre of my family’s social life. My parents put a table and chairs under the tree and strung a lamp from the branches, and when they had guests round for dinner we’d eat under that olive tree.

I never thought about how long that tree had been there or who had planted it, and why there was one lone olive tree growing in the middle of a citrus grove. I never thought about what had been on that land before the village. I knew about the Nakba, and that Israel was built on Palestinian land. But somehow I assumed that the places I grew up in were always the way they are, that that land had been empty until the village was settled by Zionists. I thought, like most colonisers, that it was Terra Nullius.

Well here’s a history lesson for you and me:

Kfar Netter was founded on 26 June 1939, by students from the Mikveh Yisrael agricultural school. The moshav was named after the school’s founder, a French Jew named Karl Netter. It was part of the ‘Khoma U’migdal’ (tower and stockade) movement. Khoma U’migdal was a settlement tactic used by Zionists during the ‘Arab Revolt’ of 1936–9, when Palestinians revolted against mass Zionist settlement in Palestine (remember, this is before the state of Israel was founded, when Palestine was under British Mandate). The idea was to build lots of Zionist settlements that would be able to defend themselves in rural areas—hence the tower and the stockade. That way Zionist control of land was maximised.

That’s the history I learned from the village’s official website. Then I did some research on the Palestine Remembered database, which keeps a record of each Palestinian community ethnically cleansed during the Nakba and since. Here’s what I learned:

Back when Kfar Netter was established, the land it’s on was part of the Tulkarem district of Palestine. That land belonged to the village of Ghabat Kafr Sur, 16 kilometres southwest of the district centre. It wasn’t a very big village. In 1931 the combined population of Ghabat Kafr Sur and the neighbouring villages of Bayyarat Hannun and Arab al-Balawina was 559. By 1945 the population of Ghabat Kafr Sur was 740, and that includes the Zionist settlements of Kfar Netter, Beit Yehoshua and Tel Yitz’hak. Even before the state of Israel was established, most of the village’s land was owned by Jews. After the state was established in 1948, the Palestinian inhabitants were completely ethnically cleansed. Today they and their descendents are scattered around the world. All that’s left of the village are three houses.

It’s funny how colonisation becomes so much more personal when you start thinking about the history of the places you spent your life in. Suddenly it’s far less abstract. What if I met someone whose parents or grandparents were ethnically cleansed from Ghabat Kafr Sur? What would I say to them?

---

[1] Well, not exactly a village. A moshav is a particular kind of Zionist agricultural settlement.

[2] 1 dunam = 1,000 square metres, or 0.1 hectares

Hunger strike

Since April 17—Palestinian Prisoners’ Day—over 2000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli Prisons are on hunger strike in protest of the practice of administrative detention, which means that prisoners are detained indefinitely without trial.

Some of the prisoners have been hunger striking for much longer. Yesterday Amnesty International issued an urgent action alert for two prisoners, Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh, who’ve been hunger striking for 68 days. Both of them are in grave danger of dying, and doctors from Physicians for Human Rights – Israel have been denied access to see them.

I can’t stop thinking about Shareen Halahleh, Thaer Halahleh’s wife, and their daughter Lamar. Lamar’s father has been in prison since before she was born. This isn’t an unusual situation in the 67 territories—incarceration is part of every family’s story. I really recommend reading Bekah Wolf’s account of her husband’s administrative detention to get a glimpse of what it means to have loved ones in Israeli prisons.

Incidentally yesterday was the anniversary of Bobby Sands’ death. He died of starvation in a British prison after a 66-day hunger strike. Sands famously said that ‘our revenge will be the laughter of our children’. I hope Thaer Halahleh gets to go home and hear his daughter’s laughter soon. Especially because right now the only alternative is death.

Since I can’t possibly say it too many times, I’m going to say (again) that ending administrative detention isn’t enough. Administrative detention is an integral part of the occupation. The most basic prerequisite for peace is an end to the occupation, the return of the 1948 refugees and a system of government that doesn’t privilege Jews over Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners’ day

April 17 is Palestinian prisonersʼ day. If you pay any attention to the situation in Palestine youʼve probably heard the statistics about imprisonment, administrative detention and torture: 4,610 political prisoners, 203 of whom are children (thatʼs according Addameer). 322 of those prisoners are in administrative detention, meaning that there are no charges, no trial, and detainees donʼt know how long theyʼll be incarcerated for.

Addameer collects statistics specifically about ʻpoliticalʼ prisoners but I am very much of the belief that all prisoners are political prisoners. Not every Palestinian who is incarcerated in an Israeli prison is there for political activism. Some are locked up for ordinary crimes like car theft. But the circumstances that lead people to commit crimes are political. Poverty is a weapon of the occupation. The Israeli military and the settlers continually remove Palestiniansʼ sources of income. They steal farmland, they uproot orchards, they impose curfews, shut down checkpoints, take away peopleʼs work permits. The IDF drives Palestinians into poverty; then they imprison them for trying to make a living. Thatʼs why I think solidarity with Palestinian prisoners needs to include all Palestinian prisoners, not only those whoʼve been imprisoned for explicitly political actions.

It is hard to comprehend the impact of incarceration on peopleʼs daily life. What does it mean for a society when every family has someone in prison? (40% of Palestinian men have spent time in prison or administrative detention.) What is it like for children growing up in a home thatʼs been broken up by the state? What is it like to be a mother looking after your baby in prison, or being separated from your child? What is it like trying to keep your family together when family members are in and out of prison and administrative detention? What is it like trying to keep your family fed and clothed when the family members whose income you depend on are in and out of prison and administrative detention? How does the trauma and violence of prison and torture affect peopleʼs relationship with their families?

The statistics donʼt do the issue justice. Itʼs only once you start to imagine living in a society where incarceration is a norm that the horror of it really hits you. (Of course, this isnʼt a situation unique to Palestine. Incarceration is used as a weapon by racist and colonial administrations around the world. Here in Aoteraoa incarceration is used as a weapon against Māori and Pacific Island people.)

Hereʼs something else to think about:

According to the East Jerusalem YMCA, over 8,000 Palestinian children have been incarcerated since 2000. Save the Children estimates that 65% of them suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. What does that mean for the future of Palestine?

As the granddaughter of holocaust survivors, I know from experience the way that trauma is passed down from generation to generation. What kind of hope is there for building a society of justice and equality out of the ashes of a racist oppressive state when so many people are carrying the trauma of occupation? After all, Israel was founded by people traumatised by fascism and racism, people whose life experience taught them that everyone outside the ʻnationʼ was an enemy, that the only way to avoid being oppressed is to become an oppressor. That oppression is now being maintained through imprisonment and administrative detention.

What kind of hope do we have for living together in peace and equality in the future when one half of society is carrying the physical and psychological scars inflicted by the other?

Itʼs not only Palestinians who are imprisoned for challenging Israelʼs policies. Yesterday a Jewish-Israeli teenager, Noam Gur, declared her refusal to serve in the Israeli Defence Force. She was sentenced to ten days in military prison. Once sheʼs released she will probably repeat the cycle of being drafted, refusing, and being sentenced to prison. 

But there is a huge difference in the way that Jewish-Israelis and Palestinians are punished for resisting Israel. Gur knows that she will not be tortured in prison. Her family will know where she is and be able to communicate with her. She will receive medical care if she needs it. I donʼt mean to minimise her experience, or her courage. I just want to point out that the consequences of resistance are so much bigger for Palestinians than they are for Jewish-Israelis.

As of today Palestinian prisoners are hunger striking indefinitely. The protest is supposed to highlight the horrific treatment of prisoners and admistrative detainees. Itʼs also so much more. Itʼs a protest of the way the entirety of Palestine has been turned into a prison, where Israel controls peopleʼs movement through roadblocks, checkpoints, border control, arbitrary confiscation of car keys, the ID system. Hunger striking is a dangerous form of protest. Itʼs possible that some of those prisoners will die. In a way thatʼs the point—itʼs a protest of the fact that Israelʼs policies have made life so unliveable that people would risk death rather than continue to live under military occupation.

DAMʼs song, written for the hunger striking prisoners, tells the stories of three Palestinian prisoners. It clarifies just how much incarceration is an integral tool of the occupation. You canʼt just fight for humane conditions in Israeli prisons, you have to fight against occupation itself.