South Hebron Hills

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October 1, Toronto

Whenever I told someone I’d led Birthright, I sometimes got this look of shock in return, especially from pro-Palestinian activists. To them, Birthright is a slick brainwashing machine. It accomplishes the double crime of turning young Jews into Israeli radicals and offensively offering free “Return” to Jews but not Palestinians.

Yes, Birthright offers a one-sided view of the Israeli narrative. But, my trip leader was far more open-minded than I’d expected. I was happy that our group learned that there is at least another side to the story. In my view, it is good to get Jews interested in and supportive of Israel, so long as that support is not uncritical. And as I saw on this trip, it's also about getting Jews interested in Judaism, and in each other (…romantically).

July 2, Jerusalem, Erev Shabbat (Birthright)

Yad Vashem in the morning. The Hand and the Name. It doesn’t translate well. I studied the Holocaust deeply in highschool. I was fascinated by it. It was hard to imagine something so massive, so traumatic happening in the recent past. The lesson? It can happen anywhere. I even went to Poland to see the concentration camps, the death camps. I looked into the pit of human ash at Majdanek, cried at the room of human hair and shoes at Auschwitz. After the Poland trip I decided I was done with it. Enough. I knew.

So I can’t do Yad Vashem again, not in the same way. Not unless I’m guiding an outsider, maybe seeing Schindler’s List for the first time. I think it is necessary to understand the Holocaust to understand the Jews today. We are still scarred by it - our culture immersed in it. But for outsiders and particularly for our adversaries, numbers dead become abstract, Nazis become allegories, concentration camps an open-air prison. Ahmadinejad, racist pig that he is, is not Hitler. Israelis, occupation and all, are not Nazis. Neither are Hamas Nazis, though I do not shy away from labeling terrorism as terrorism.

July 13, South Hebron Hills, Area C West Bank

I had never driven in the West Bank before. Not really. I once took an armored bus from Beit She’an to Jerusalem. Forty year old bombed out Jordanian bunkers and building lined route 90, evidence of what was. Jericho appeared as a desert mirage, distant, mysterious and dangerous.

This time I’m in a small private car. We drive through East Jerusalem and the sights become less familiar. My tour guide and driver puts on a knitted kippah, better to look like a settler. With a young Ashkenazi face and a beard, he could pass. His English is fluent and he speaks almost without pause. It’s too much to soak up. My co-passengers are two American Jewish activists. They listen intently, occasionally interrupting to ask a question. I’m a little uncomfortable. I was invited partly as favor from a friend and partly as a representative of Yalla Journal. Yalla certainly doesn’t have any opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but I do. And I’m nervous of seeing the Israeli settlement enterprise up close.

We travel south, through winding desert hills. This part of the West Bank is less populated, more rural. According to the Oslo Accords, this is Area C, which is under both Israeli civil and military administration. There is an excellent map of settlements produced by the Israeli NGO Peace Now HERE.
Our first stop is a tiny Palestinian village near an Israeli settlement. Village is perhaps the wrong word. There were a few tents and some caves. We learn that the encampment has been demolished before, wells broken and poisoned (to discourage re-settlement?). Evidence of the latter is a rusting car inside one of the wells. The story is not uncommon in Area C.

It goes something like this. An Israeli settlement is constructed, legally or illegally (any new settlements built after the Oslo Accords are considered to be “illegal outposts” and are supposed to be demolished. In practice, few have been). Whether it is a government-sponsored settlement or an illegal outpost officially slated for demolition, settlements require “buffer zones” for security. The army patrols these lands and keeps Palestinians out. All of this is ostensibly to protect the settlers, but serves the settlement’s expansion because private land left “untended” becomes public land after a year, which is easily annexed by the growing settlement. Thus, a settlement considered illegal even by Israel's own government ends up looking rather permanent.

A local Palestinian points out the boundary of the invisible buffer zone running through the valley between the settlement and us. It’s surreal. A lone soldier appears from a hut atop a rocky hill. We look like activists. Maybe we'll breach the buffer zone or throw rocks or something. The soldier walks about 100 meters across his hill, but does not descend. Unless he knows we’re going to cause trouble, it’s not worth hiking down the hill in this heat. So we stare at each other, maybe five or six hundred meters apart. Finally, we turn around. At least we broke up the monotony of his shift.

We return to the village tents. Here we meet a few young international activists, sitting comfortably and typing on laptops. Something is being anachronous. Our guide explains that activists like these escort Palestinians in various ways. For example, to their fields to discourage harassment from settlers or soldiers (by having the deeds to the land on hand, for example). In this particular case, activists have stayed in the tents to discourage bulldozing of the village. The bulldozing threat stems from a general problem for Palestinians living in Area C: it is quite difficult to secure building permits, especially in the rural areas. When they build anyway, the structure receives a demolition order. More on this in a future post.

We drive off. There’s a phenomenon, our guide says, of young people (and particularly young Jews) coming to the West Bank, where they see the occupation for the first time. They are shocked, indignant. They put on a Kaffiyeh, live in a desert tent for a year, learn a little Arabic, learn a little bit about themselves, admire the Orientals, and then, then they move on with their lives. His tone is derisive.

Our tour guide is a member of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO "of veteran combatants who served in the Israeli military during the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the routine situations of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. The organization endeavors to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis, and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life." The organization accepts testimony from soldiers about their time in the army, particularly concerning human rights abuses. Incidents are corroborated from more than one source. Lately they've received considerable flak for publishing testimonies from soldiers who fought in the recent Gaza War. I haven't found the stomach to read it yet.

July 2,

Jerusalem, Shabbat (Birthright)
Shabbat is at the Wall. I take my turn supervising the guys, weary of more harassment from the religious. But not this time. Instead, a great dancing circle forms, made up of yeshivah students, birthright youth from other trips, and a few Black-Hats. It brings back memories of my highschool days. Singing “Am Yisrael Chai” (the nation of Israel lives) dancing in circles, arm-in-arm. Perhaps I should join to encourage my guys to take part. But I don’t feel like it, not this particular circle. So instead I stand, smiling, hoping they'll get a taste of that brotherhood.

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Photos

South Hebron Hills
Our Kippah-wearing "settler" tour guide shows us around the southern West Bank.

Lone Soldier
Look closely and you'll see the soldier guarding the area around the settlement. He walked about 100 meters from his hut when we approached. Person in the foreground got in the way of the picture.

Defense Outpost
The same defense outpost. The invisible buffer zone ran through the valley with the trees.

Settlements
According to my guide, houses on the right were built during the settlement freeze (officially illegally).