Deir Yassin Reflected

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

This morning I went to Deir Yassin with Eitan Bronstein. We met a group of eleven Internationals and Eitan led a two-hour discussion about the Nakba, Deir Yassin, Zochrot and Eitan's own journey away from his zionist upbringing towards educating the Hebrew-speaking Israeli public regarding the Nakba. I was very happy to hear Eitan talk; it was the first time I had heard him publicly speak in English and I learned a lot.

On the way to Jerusalem (Deir Yassin is in Jerusalem) I asked Eitan about the Palestine Remembered website. Specifically, I asked him why the fact sheet says 94 people were massacred and in the stories and memories section it says 250 / 254 etc. His answer was one I had never thought of. He said that, in fact, there were 93 recorded names of victims (Zochrot had a ceremony in 2004, reading all the names from a list then posting the list outside the gates to the mental hospital (what Deir Yassin now is...the list is NOT there anymore). The 250 number comes from the Haganah (now the Israeli Defense Forces...IDF), who assisted the Irgun and Stern gangs (celebrated Israeli terrorist groups) in the slaughter. They exaggerated the number to use for the purposes of fear. And the Palestinians accepted those numbers because it goes along with the nature of the horrible atrocities. Eitan told me that the New Historians have revealed that the death toll was actually in between 110 and 140. He said a good website is the official Deir Yassin site: http://www.deiryassin.org/

Just a word on the New Historians. A man named Benny Morris wrote a book (I am not sure if it is his 1991 book called 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians or an earlier one that was a landslide). He uncovered much of what really happened in Israel / Palestine. The short story is that he changed the way historians in Israel "do history." That is not to say he is a shining beacon of human rights and truth. No, alas, he is a committed zionist, who unashamedly still says that if the right time presents itself, then Israel needs to be completely emptied of all Arabs. At any rate, there has been a movement of uncovering the truth, since then, and this academic community is called the New Historians. Many are not zionists and they struggle to keep day jobs in a country where being un-zionist is unpopular - tantamount to employment and political suicide.

I also was able to ask Eitan about Judiasm and zionism. It was my understanding that there weren't any religious Jews who were not connected with the land in a nationalistic sense. He corrected me and told me that the zionist Judaism is a chauvenist Judaism (I'm not sure what he meant by that...the name Zochrot is the feminine form of the Hebrew word, Remember). But, he said, there are Jews who have my "Christian" understanding of social justice and caring for the oppressed, the fatherless, the widow, etc. He told me about a rabbi who said to him that Zochrot is doing "God's work." I found that very warming.

Back to Deir Yassin. Eitan told me that Ben Gurion, while still Prime Minister, knew that Deir Yassin would be remembered so he came up with a plan to try to erase the memory. He would turn it into a mental hospital and close it off from the public, thereby barring anyone from being able to put up a memorial and have the massacre officially remembered. I am pretty sure that the reason why Deir Yassin is so significant in the minds of Palestinians is because of how much the propaganda machine of the zionists concentrated on using the massacre to instill fear in Palestinians and drive them out of their homes. I have read that in the days after the massacre, the Haganah drove around Jerusalem in sound trucks saying, "Unless you leave, your fate will be the same as Deir Yassin." There were many such Deir Yassin-type atrocities, however; not just the one.

Eitan told our group today that even the idea that there was a war inside Palestine in 1948 can be very strongly contested. There were very few Palestinian villages who organised themselves and tried to fight the Israelis. By far the majority of them had white flags hanging out of windows and in the centres of villages to show they would not attack. It did not matter. As for Palestinians fighting zionists in 1948, there was a faction of Palestinians, under the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, who attacked the main corridor between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, to cut off the Jewish supplies route, among other things. They were not trained like the Haganah; and they did not stand a chance against them. Interestingly enough, al-Husseini died on April 08, 1948, in a neighbouring village of Deir Yassin, really demoralising Palestinians.

The actual warring went on between different Arab nations and the zionists. The Palestinians, themselves, were by and large, peaceful and not violent against the zionists. By and large. I found all of this fascinating. For me, it tempers the miraculous claims that "against all odds" Israel was established. I don't know, I suppose it was against all odds because the Palestinians sure didn't see it coming. I do not know enough about this to comment further.

After we finished our discussion with the group, all thirteen of us climbed up a stone wall and into the derelect Deir Yassin cemetery, outside of the hospital grounds. It is derelect because Israel will not allow any caretaking of it. There is a Muslim organisation that seeks to preserve such Palestinian sites; but they are not allowed to preserve this one. The graves were all broken. We saw a freshly shattered tombstone today. Eitan told us that he has been in there when young Jewish boys came running up, laughing, and showed them some Palestinian bones that had become exposed. They were laughing about Arab bones. He then told the group about how, in Israel, nearly every week, there is a story on the tv news about how a Jewish cemetery was defaced in Poland, or Germany, or somewhere else and how it is an outrage. He told us how he had phoned the Municipality of Jerusalem and many newspapers trying to get them to take seriously the Deir Yassin cemetery and allow Palestinians to honour the dead by being allowed to keep it cared-for. He was told that no one cares and nothing would be done. What else is also very ironic, the largest Holocaust memorial in Israel is just over a kilometre away from Deir Yassin.

In regards to Eitan's personal journey, he told how he was born in Argentina, moved to Israel with his family when he was five and raised on a kibbutz. He knew that there were piles of rubble near his kibbutz but all he was ever told was that they were Crusader ruins (a very popular story here); but that years later he found out that the ruins were, actually, a destroyed Palestinian village. He said that having these questions in his mind began to make him more sensitive. The turning point, he said, was when Israel invaded Lebanon for "peacekeeping," which is a outright lie. He, and many others, refused to invade and attack innocents in Lebanon and he spent some time in prison. Eitan said that he really struggled with the decision to turn his back on being a soldier (for he, to his shame, was an excellent soldier).

Then, during the first intifada, he refused to go to the West Bank and was jailed a couple of more times. He said it was easier these times because he had already decided. During the second intifada, when 13 Israeli-Arabs (Palestinians who live within the borders of 1948 Israel and have citizenship and a difficult, racist-laden existence) were killed by the IDF, he had decided that enough was enough and knew that as a Jew he needed to reach other Jews and talk about the Nakba and the occupation. He said a very interesting thing: that he does not see the good of constantly having joint Jewish / Palestinian NGO's and groups for peace. He knows that the Jews are the problem of there being no peace so why should he drag the Palestinians into his peace efforts. He, as a Jew, should be reaching Jews. The fact is, there are many Palestinian-Israelis who are involved in Zochrot, even on staff. We are very involved with Palestinian-Israeli groups and individuals; but not involved with the West Bank Palestinians for various reasons. One is that it is very difficult for Israelis to enter the West Bank, now. Another is that there are many groups working with the West Bank and Eitan feels that the problem lies with the Jews, who need to face the truth and deal with the real history, and be freed from the zionism that they all learn in school.

I want to add something that has been really revealing itself to me over the past few weeks. There is no good from getting people to empathise and sympathise with the Palestinian plight if they are only going to hate the Jews. Love and forgiveness must win out. I go out of my way to nod to all sorts of people because I am trying to realise this in myself. I will talk with soldiers, not even telling them what I do, but just looking them in the eye, showing them respect and trying to see their humanity, for my own sake. I do find it difficult to love Israelis when I get all turned around over the ongoing injustices to the Palestinian peoples. But that was what was so freeing about my bike ride last night. In the midst of being all torn up inside, I was seeing the beauty of humanity and value in the Tel Aviv folk down by the Yarkon river.

I know that for me it is easy to be polemical and to take an extreme side. But I find that it takes less commitment to do that. I don't have to work through the difficult issues if I just write off all Israelis, or all Americans, as villains, or whatever. What takes great effort is to love a people that is stiffnecked and difficult. What takes much commitment to peace is to find the humanity in someone that I don't want to; someone I want to villify. I find my swirling emotions to be teaching me much, especially as I seek to use Jesus as my example of human rights. He said crazy things, like Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. And, Blessed are the Peacemakers for they shall be called sons / daughters of God. Sometimes the statements of Jesus that I read seem like paradoxes that make no sense; other times I find pearls of great value in them. Like the two I mentioned, I don't think I have the eyes, yet, to see them true in this land - the very land He delivered them in.

Sorry for being so heavy-duty. I hope to have some funny stories soon enough. But it is what it is....non?

ps. my toes are basically healed up, now; and I've got a helmet. I also finished my first video clip, about Bir'im, this afternoon, so look for it in the next couple of days on www.zochrot.org I am working an figuring out how we can stream the videos so folks with dial up don't have to wait around for it to download. I'll let you know; although the videos we have are not much more than 10MBs, which isn't that much.

Peace in the Middle Eass!

Burro.