"Like a Monkey on a Brick"

Using the phrase "close to home" is somewhat problematic, since I've never experienced reservation life, but this is the phrase I'm going to use to describe the situation of the Palestinian people.

For me, this is Plymouth Rock. I admit I am biased in that I very much see this issue in terms of black and white. I have always tended to lump white people into one category, Israelis into one category, even though I know that there are white people and Israelis who fight tooth and nail against racism, colonialism, and use their privilege as leverage to fight and educate against these systems of oppression. (Case in point: the refuseniks; this group.) This trip has helped me very much to humanize Israelis, to see them as human beings. Though I look at the majority of them and see pilgrims from 1620, it didn't hit me until Rotam's tour of East Jerusalem that even those settlers are people. Even the bad ones like in Hebron... there has to be some shred of good left in there. But I really doubted that after seeing the fencing the Hebronites put above the marketplace to stop the settlers from throwing trash and bricks on them, after visiting Hashim's house in Tel Rumeida and seeing his new baby, hearing that his neighbors above him threatened his and his children's lives every day. It's hard not to see things in black and white when you hear these stories. Even though I know the oppressors are human, I can't detatch myself from my lifelong loathing of my own imperialist culture and supremacist dogma. I've studied too much.

The Birthright kids see a home for the Chosen People, compensation for the Holocaust, beaches, sun, democracy. I see 1492, I see genocide, ethnic cleansing, Manifest Destiny. I see Wounded Knee Creek, I see fences and walls trapping, I see Bantustan, I see the FBI machine-gunning reservations. America says, "Why are you complaining? We gave you the land you're living on!" Israel agrees: "Yes, this was a GENEROUS OFFER!"

I see Richard the Lionheart, white slaughtering brown, again and again and again and again and again.

THESE PEOPLE SHUT DOWN ORPHANAGES. They STEAL FOOD FROM CHILDREN. You can't look at the truth and side with or God forbid, sympathize with Israel. You can't, especially not if you call yourself a liberal. There is no happy side to Aparthied. This is not a question of Jews having a right to biblical land, this is an issue of HUMAN RIGHTS.

I see Chiapas, I see Ireland, I see the AIM and the EZLN. In Palestine I see a people terrorized beyond belief that still refuse to stop living, refuse to give up their name. In the last scene of The Crucible, the inquisitors tell John Proctor to sign something before he's executed and he refuses: "Because it is my name! ... How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!" Areej, our guide through Dheisha refugee camp in Bethlehem, told us, "Israelis have taken everything EXCEPT our pride." These people will keep the name "Palestinian" even if they die keeping it.