The Wall Between Right and Wrong

My son’s former babysitter writing messages on the Wall

Recently when I was in the States, I was telling a friend of mine some minor story about a recent even in my life and it began something like this:  “I have this friend of X nationality, who is X religion and is married to man of Y nationality and Y religion and lived in Z country….”  When I concluded my story, my friend commented to me, “I can tell how much living in Palestine has influenced you, you started that story with the need to identify every person by their origin and religion even though it had nothing to do with what you were telling me.” It was a telling comment considering one of my biggest complaints about Jerusalem is the feeling that everybody is observing everybody else to figure out where they come from and what their religious background is.

So I begin this story carefully telling you that the main subject of the story is an American-born, Jewish woman who was schooled in a Yeshiva and is engaged to a British-Israeli Jew.  She is not a close acquaintance of mine, but recently she asked me if I would give her a tour of Ramallah because she has heard such wonderful things about the city, is curious, and wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to visit it before she may be undergoing the Israeli citizenship process as a result of the upcoming marriage.  I was actually honored that she asked me to be her guide.

I took her into downtown Ramallah and she accompanied me on my shopping errands.  We stopped at the post office where she picked up some Palestinian stamps.  She picked up a very cool turquoise purse, asking me what colors she thinks she can wear with it (Red, definitely!). She purchased a Hebron-manufactured Kuffieyeh (the traditional black and white Palestinian scarf popularized by Arafat who was said to be adept at folding it into a map of Palestine) for her fiancé who is a tour guide and would like to use it to describe the different “layers” of society here (layers is her word). I took her through the crowded fruit and vegetable market where we bargained for the newly, in-season sweet cherries.  I took her to Stars and Bucks where she bought a couple of souvenir mugs for her collection.  Then we had lunch at one of Ramallah’s best outdoor cafes.  All along the way, I told her stories of what daily life is like for an average Palestinian.  She had no idea why she had never seen cars with the white Palestinian plates on roads in Jerusalem (because they are not allowed to go into Jerusalem).  When she observed that most of what was in the stores in Ramallah was in the stores in Jerusalem, I explained to her the laborious system of “importing” goods into the West Bank which Israel  exposes to extensive searches in the name of security, which greatly adds costs to the importers and goods sold on the local market.

I thought it was a fairly successful excursion; success in my mind being equated to exposing her to some of the ridiculous hoops that Palestinians go through in the name of security, to which they are completely powerless.

But on the car ride back to Jerusalem, she asked me what my “reaction is” to all of this.  I wanted to answer her honestly without running our relationship.

For better or worse, I was born with a strong sense of right and wrong and a need to see and feel justice in all situations.   This has proved problematic in general and something I have cursed a million times.  Most of my life, my reaction to situations in which I see wrong has been relayed to others as judgmental.  And that has been the curse.  I’ve had to learn to be an observer and a witness to situations in which I take my time to consider, learn, and think before reacting.  It’s been a part of me that I’ve had to learn to tame and figure my way through.

Living in Palestine has provided me the perfect opportunity to figure out this life lesson.  I’ve witnessed and felt injustices all around me on a daily basis.  I’ve questioned what I should do.  I’ve felt such intense feelings of anger.  I’ve spat hateful comments at innocent passengers on the journey; knowing deep inside this was not the person I wanted to be.  I pleaded with myself to figure out another reaction to this overwhelming powerlessness that I felt.  Everybody who works and lives here knows in a sense, that because the most powerful country in the world decides to remain impotent to the situation, that the action of each individual, regardless of what they choose that to be, can feel so meaningless at the end of each day.

The only thing left for me was to learn to become a patient observer.  At first I practiced this, not knowing what the patience would bring forth.  The first and loudest question was, Why?  Why this injustice? Why the desire to be so unfair to a large number of people who have done nothing wrong?  Why the continue statements on both sides that are used to justify each position, but in the end do not sensibly lead to the concluded reaction?  As I started to investigate this question, I knew I had to learn more about the narratives that each side uses and where they come from.

And that is where I began my answer to Sarah.  I explained to her that without passing judgment, and being willing to disagree, each day I find myself asking questions of people from both sides to understand what beliefs drive their actions.  I explained that I withhold judgment and instead look for the all-human nature feelings that drive the need for the beliefs and actions – fear, hate, mistrust.  I explain that I’ve learned with much difficulty and my own misactions, that my job is not to contribute to wrong beliefs or hate.  But in any way I can, I try to get people of the other side to understand the humanness of the other’s beliefs – not so they can agree or disagree or justify their actions, but maybe so that they can feel a little more powerful in their role in this situation.

Her reaction to this is a familiar justification that I’ve heard from Israelis many times.  She began with a justification of how important Jerusalem is to the Jewish people.  I gently point out to her that this is no different than how most Christians and Muslims are also raised to think of Jerusalem.  She then brings up the holocaust, another familiar narrative of Israelis.  I respect the trauma that the Jewish people carry with them based on that event.  But I find ways to point out how that event has little reflection on the current events that Israel finds itself in the middle of today and that transference of this trauma to the Palestinians may be worsening the situation that Israel finds itself in.  This trauma unfortunately has no bearing on the frustration that is felt by the Palestinians as they watch their land being stole for the build-up of the settlements and the restricting policies of the occupation.  This is my main message to her, that Palestinian resistance is resistance to the policies of occupation.  I point out to her the many peaceful resistance actions that have sprung up in recent weeks, and how I am hopeful that this will start to get people outside of Palestine to look at themselves and start to question which of their own long term beliefs may not be serving anybody’s interests.

I don’t know yet what she took away most from that day in Ramallah.  I am just grateful that at no time she did state how the Wall was a successful Israeli security policy as most Israelis believe.  I would have had to point out how wrong she was.