An Interesting Tour of Jerusalem

This is a charged entry, because it's talking about a charged interaction that I witnessed.

Faun (name changed again), one of my colleagues at Grassroots Jerusalem, took me and a few others from the office on a tour of Jerusalem. This tour was not the typical tour you would find elsewhere in the city, as it is one from the Palestinian perspective, highlighting what the communities used to look like in '47 (1948 was the year Israel was born, and resulted in a military confrontation that saw Israel significantly expand it's borders beyond what was determined by the UN, displacing millions of Palestinians who continue to be refugees all over the world) and even in '66 (1967 was another military confrontation where Israel occupied the remaining Palestinian territory, including Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank. The second occupation in 1967 is still considered illegal under international law).

We were at a pier, overlooking the whole city and talking about the history of the construction of the Separation Wall and the displacement/segregation of many communities when an Israeli man walked by and overheard our conversation. He stopped and engaged us in a conversation, challenging Faun on a few of her points. In particular, he walked by when Faun was talking about laws that discriminate against Palestinians. He asked her if she had a specific example of a law that did that. Faun had already listed several to the group, so she responded by citing the law that if a Jerusalemite Palestinian marries a Palestinian from the West Bank (on the other side of the wall), the Jerusalemite will lose their residency card for Jerusalem and will not be able to live, travel or be a citizen of Jersualem (including losing their health care - details here http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=505.)

They Israeli man responded by saying, "well, that's for security reasons." A vague and emotionally manipulative argument. Turns out that was his favourite argument. He denied any racist or discriminatory policies by the Israeli state, and when confronted with abundant examples - many from personal experiences in Faun's life - he continued to justify them on the basis of "security reasons." So, my conclusion from this man's position is that 1. All Palestinians are inherently a terrorist threat to the State of Israel, even the ones living in Jerusalem with "full" Israeli citizenship (which, to him is not a racist position), and therefore 2. Israel's violations of human rights against Palestinians are justified in the interests of "security." A well reasoned argument, in my opinion, as long as you accept all the myths about terrorist Palestinians and ignore all of the internal and international condemnation of Israeli policies. But that's easy to do.

My favourite part of our argument, though, was that he defended Israel's existence on the basis that Israel is the "only safe place for Jews to live in the world." I met some pretty safe and happy Jews in San Francisco when I was there, and have visited the Hasidic community in Montreal as well. I didn't hear from any of them that they felt unsafe because they were living outside of Israel. I by no means am arguing that there is no anti-Semtism in the world - there are certainly places in the world that it is unsafe to be Jewish - but to claim that Israel is the only safe place in the world for Jews to be is factually false. Also, Israel is not a perfectly safe-haven for all Jews, as an increasingly orthodox and conservative definition of what Judaism is inside Israel is making it unsafe for "leftist" Jews and homosexual Jews, to name just two targeted groups.

Back to the conversation. The Israeli man stated that Jerusalem is the homeland of the Jewish people, that it is their only homeland, and that they deserve a homeland. I'm not arguing that Jewish people do not deserve or merit a safe place to call home. Everyone on this earth deserves a safe and accepting place to live. What I see as problematic in his argument is directly related to the Occupation. I asked him, "Does a person who was born in Brooklyn, New York - whose family has been in Brooklyn since the 1700s - deserve to have land and rights in Jerusalem simply on the grounds that he is Jewish by religion, while Palestinians who have been living here for 1,500 years are denied those same privileges?" How can you believe so strongly in the Right of Return for Jewish people who may not even have family heritage tracing back to Jerusalem, and yet support of the denial of Palestinian Right of Return for refugees who were forced off of their traditional land only 50 years ago!? To me, it's maddeningly illogical. These arguments exist in a swamp of contradiction.

In the end, we decided to leave the argument, as it was clear that neither side was hearing the other. It showed me many things about the perspectives that are engaging in this debate about Israel/Palestine. I come back to Ido's well made point: true democracy and freedom in Israel can only exist if the Occupation is ended. Otherwise, it's really a sham built on inequality and racism.

In the end, the tour ended up being very interesting, as well as very sad. I'll upload some pictures as they can better describe the reality here than can words.