A Walk With the Panthers
Rachel Brown | Posted June 29th, 2009 | Middle East
I’ve passed through Jerusalem’s Musrara neighborhood a handful of times on my way to the Old City or Damascus Gate, noticing only the main road that separates East and West Jerusalem. Before 1967, Road 1 was the international border dividing Jordan and Israel, and a firewall between opposing political agendas. Where visitors now tour the ramparts of the Old City, Jordanian guards once stood with snipers; in their direct line of fire were the Mizrahi Jews of Musrara. During the seventies, Musrara became the Oakland, California of unsuspecting West Jerusalem—a hub of activism amidst an increasingly militarized society.
Former Israeli Black Panther Activist Reuben Abergel gives a tour of the historic Musrara neighborhood
Former Israeli Black Panther activist Reuben Abergel gives a tour of the historic Musrara neighborhood
For those unfamiliar, the word “Mizrahim” refers to Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent who largely came to Israel after 1948. United by the shared experience of socioeconomic hardship, educational inequity and institutional discrimination, Mizrahim were initially settled along Israel’s contentious borders, while most Ashkenazim (Jews from Europe) lived in safer towns and cities away from Israel’s periphery. Around the time Angela Davis met with Huey Newton and Stokely Carmichael to further the Black Panther agenda in the U.S., a group of young Mizrahi activists began congregating in the houses and plazas of Musrara to form HaPanterim HaShohorim, or the Israeli Black Panthers.
Last Friday I had the chance to walk with original Panther activist Reuben Abergel through the streets and plazas of Musrara to learn about the Mizrahi struggle for equal rights and recognition. As part of my work with the AIC this summer, I have been profiling various social movements within Israel (i.e. women working for peace, refugees from Darfur, etc.) to create a connection between domestic social justice issues and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Reuben Abergel discusses how Mizrahi activists fought for equal rights and recognition throughout the seventies
Reuben Abergel discusses how Mizrahi activists fought for equal rights and recognition throughout the seventies
Throughout the tour Reuben highlighted the parallels between social discrimination against Arab Jews within Israel and the oppression of Palestinians. According to a colleague of mine, Mizrahi Jews are the ideal group to forge peace between Israel and Palestine because of the cultural and linguistic similarities many share with Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Yet Reuben believes this connection has never been realized due to the marginalization of the non-Ashkenazi narrative in Israel. This reality exists although Ashkenazim constitute only thirty percent of Israeli society.
At least in the States, the news we usually hear about Israel is a story of Jews and Palestinians. Rarely, if ever, do we hear about discrimination against Arab Jews in Israel, yet the two issues are interrelated. The history of Jerusalem’s Musrara neighborhood challenges the Sunday school lessons I was always taught that all Jews are treated equally in the land of Israel. Yet the histories and hierarchies among Israeli Jews are not simply a reason to roll our eyes at our former Sunday school teachers. Most likely they meant well; for certain they never took an Israeli Black Panther tour. The story of division between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim is also an opportunity to look for future points of connection and cooperation between social groups within Israel, so that when the time comes (I can’t see why it hasn’t), those between Israelis and Palestinians can be more numerous and sustainable.
Rachel,
Your response to Herb’s request really moved me and I can completely identify with your feelings as I felt them from the “other side” when I was volunteering in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. It’s very difficult to express any kind of reconciliatory or “peace-seeking” opinion to people who believe that “peace” is an illusion because they have suffered their entire lives from fear, oppression, and unimaginable tragedies the likes of which pained me to fathom. Hearing their stories silenced me on several occasions and relegated me to “how could you ever understand?” status. And it’s true, I don’t know what it’s like growing up in refugee camps, living under bombardment, shells, siege, discrimination, hated, and then learning my entire life that the solution is to go back to a “home” which is occupied by bellicose settlers…
In the evenings I would also go out to the bar with the activists, the leftists, my fellow volunteers, many of whom were more open to discussing the possibility that maybe not all Israelis were “evil Zionists”… but it didn’t change the fact that “I don’t know” what it’s like and that my comments were, therefore, theoretical at best… How do you open constructive dialogue while maintaining the balance of friend/partner in solidarity?
Anyway, I really admire your courage not only for going out there and doing it to the best of your ability, as difficult as it is, but also for sharing your experiences with us. I look forward to hearing more about your struggle and perhaps your discovery of the best method for change!
Also.. thank you for enlightening me on the Mizrahim, I don’t know or hear enough about them in general and I find it very interesting.
Hope you are well,
Hania
Thank you so much, Rachel, for your openness and honesty. You bring me back to moments of similar confusion in my own life, and of the extraordinarily difficult issues of how and when and where to protest, to push for change, to stand up. From time to time my high horse has been over-ridden; and sometimes out to pasture.
How easy it was, for instance, for me to protest the Vietnam War as part of a ruly mob facing bayonets at the Pentagon without my having much if any sensitivity about the individuals who held those weapons and were obeying orders to keep the peace. What might each of them have been thinking.
Or in my small island community here in Maine some years ago, divided over a key local issue: how hard it was–sometimes impossible–to reach out to people with whom I disagreed, to risk further aggravating the situation or, worse, jeopardizing my oh-yeah-pristine status.
Here’s to Uncertainty, the opportunity to risk, to learn, to remain human!
Best wishes, Herb
This is a very rich exchange. Thanks to Herb for raising a key question about the impact of this work on our volunteers. I’m also interested to finally see some focus on the Mizrahi Jews, and hear something of their background. There are so many communities in Israel that need this sort of exposure. Also, I find your idea of building bridges between Palestinians and Arab to be very interesting and challenging. Curious about how this will happen. Remember, the Palestinians have never been very keen on imposed interethnic initiatives – particularly “people to people” projects. Perhaps start by identifying areas of common interest?
Rachel, I enjoyed immensely this post and your response to Herb’s comment. You are bringing up a lot of issues that we rarely hear about, and I think most people would be surprised how much more varied opinions are within Israel than the ones we hear from within the States. For those of us who are from the bay area the analogy to Oakland in the 70’s really strikes a cord. I really appreciate the nuance you are able to provide and I think as you write more you will feel more comfortable integrating some of your emotional responses into your posts in a productive way.
Hi Herb,
Thanks so much for your comment. You have picked up on something I’ve been struggling with my entire time here, and I’m glad you have, because I think it is good for me to talk about. To be honest, each blog has been painstaking for me to write because I am filled with so much conflicting emotion. As you noted, the way I dealt with this was to choose a more removed tone (perhaps to a fault).
Until now all the advocacy work I have done has been out of context (aka thousands of miles away from Israel/Palestine), and among people with almost identical views. For the first time I find myself in a place where I am hesitant to talk about my views with people I meet outside of work. At first this was because I wanted to make friends, and because I didn’t want to become the foreigner activist who shows up in somebody else’s society without talking to anyone and proclaims her views from the mountaintop. In many ways I feel envious of AIC interns who have lived in Beit Sahur who don’t have to explain and justify and sugar coat in order to make friends. The degree to which the views of the AIC are the exception to the exception to the rule is not to be underestimated, I have learned. This is not a judgment, but a lived experience. Even among activist Israelis I have spoken with, they tell me that they must sugar coat for many friends and family members in everyday life. I feel this. Perhaps the hesitation on my part to openly discuss my views with my friends makes me a coward; perhaps it makes me human, and we can all learn something about how silencing works. Yet at the same time, the longer I stay here, I begin to understanding on a new level the complexity of the situation from an Israeli perspective–something that has changed my own views. My belief in the injustice being done to the Palestinians under occupation has not changed; if anything, my time spent in the West Bank has made my convictions stronger. I feel sick to my stomach when I leave the West Bank, especially when I stay overnight, and come through a checkpoint the next morning back into affluent West Jerusalem where people are allowed to move freely. Or when full grown Palestinian men are made to get off a bus by an eighteen-year-old boy so they can prove their identity in their own land. It makes me viscerally uncomfortable to the point where I can’t understand what divine plan has allowed this to happen. A Palestinian friend of mine said the other day that he thinks everything happening in Gaza and the West Bank is a divine lesson–at the very least, he needs to think of it this way, or else he will be driven to madness. It is what keeps him hopeful.
And yet as somebody living, interacting with, and meeting wonderful people and friends in Israeli society, I am learning two things: one, that most Israelis I have met outside of work are not against Palestinian rights, or for turning a blind eye to the plight of civilians, but they have been given the security narrative since day one, and to a certain degree, legitimately. At least among the moderate-to-progressive Israelis in my social circle, they have spent their lives hearing about bombs and intifadas and terror. The degree to which the Israeli government and the press use the word “terror” to further a given political agenda is irrelevant inasmuch as my Israeli friends are used to, and have been trained to live on the defensive (due to many things: real events, the Israeli press and propaganda, the current right-wing government, etc). And who is to say I would not be the same way? Their reality and frame of reference does not excuse bigotry, or turning a blind eye, or not thinking about what is being done under Israel’s name, but it does mean I have opened my eyes to what it is like to be Israeli. So the times when I have raised my own views, and pointed to the connection between occupation and violence, between oppression of Palestinians and the continued cycles of Qassam rocket attacks, I feel like an alien out of water. Because at the end of the day, my comments are always countered with “but you don’t know what it’s like.” And really, they are right. When I try to talk about my experiences in the West Bank, what I saw at a checkpoint or in Beit Sahur, my friends may be receptive, but then there is always a palpable and dreaded silence that is filled with so much tension that I am pinching my sides and turning purple and dying for an excuse to change the conversation.
My time being here has also made me sensitive to comments from fellow leftie activists that paint all soldiers with one brush (mostly these are people who have never been to the Middle East). Because everyone here is conscripted here, there is no one meaning of the word. Young boys and girls are thrown into boot camp when they graduate high school where they learn to assemble guns as fast as possible, shoot snipers (some of them), and attend lessons about “what they are fighting for,” according to a friend of mine. They are not given a choice. This reality will never excuse the brutalities that are committed against Palestinian civilians. But it means this conflict is a hell of a lot more complicated than I ever guessed. It means that instead of painting all soldiers with one brush, we need to question what kind of a system creates a society that is so deeply militarized. It means talking to soldiers, getting to know them, understanding their head, so we can all work together to point our fingers in the right places.
During the day I work at a radical left-wing organization where any discussion is game. When I leave at 5pm, I return to my friends, all of whom were once soldiers, and I have a beer, laugh, chat, practice some Hebrew, and don’t touch politics until the next day. I lead two separate lives here, and it has been extremely hard. If anything, my convictions about the injustices of occupation have grown stronger and have been internalized in a way I want to talk about and carry with me for the rest of my life. At the same time, I am beginning to wonder what I believe to be the best method for making change. Writing is great. But listening and asking questions is just as important. Sounds obvious, but I may have taken it for granted. ALready I have allowed myself to be changed by this whole experience, and I’m glad for it.
Anyway, thank you for your question. It seems my winding answer was more for me than for you! However, it was very important for me to write. Slowly but surely, I will try to incorporate more emotion into my blogs, because I think people can learn a lot from the emotions and thought processes that lie underneath the more formal writing.
Rachel, at the risk of asking you to be unprofessional–if only momentarily–I’d be more than a little interested in what your AIC/AP experience is doing to your head and to your heart. I very much appreciate the objectivity and clarity of your blogs, but suspect that that comes at a price. No surprise there. I look at the smiling face in your official AP photograph and can’t help but wonder what’s going on within.
Meanwhile, you’re teaching me a lot. Thank you.
Herb