The World Was Created For My Sake, Hence I Must Be Upright And Just

Just before I left for the Middle East, we went on a 251 Club trip to Isle La Motte.  I was struck by this sign marking Vermont's "oldest settlement" and the celebratory flag that we now see in Burlington as well proclaiming this to be the 400th year since Samuel de Champlain's arrival to the area.

While perhaps not quite so explicit, and certainly not so recent, as "a land without a people for a people without a land," the United States certainly has its own dark history when it comes to seizing territory and shamefully treating the people who already lived there.  Such a comparison between our past and what's happening in Palestine and Israel came up quite a bit in discussions with our peace activist friends. 

The walls we built were mostly wooden and instead of ghettoes we created reservations.  Our forebears felt justified in taking land because it wasn't being used properly.  They felt justified in brutally repressing the natives because of their "terrorism".  We pretend the indigenous populations are sovereign, but our government decides what their status is.  This certainly makes it harder for us to judge Israelis and their policies so harshly when we don't quite occupy the moral high ground we imagine.

The First Peoples aren't totally invisible here, though.  Names of rivers, roads and towns use their words.  We have Pow Wows and other festivities that showcase their culture.  But we still have overlaid our world upon theirs.

Tel Aviv is celebrating a milestone this year as well: the city is marking its centennial with arts festivals, concerts, etc.  It began as a neighborhood in Jaffa and didn't actually get its name until the following year:

Minutes of a meeting of the Ahuzat Bayit Committee, early 1910:
Dr.Hayyim Hisin: “I suggest that we call our new neighborhood Herzliya, in memory of Herzl”
Abraham Gerson Hanoh: “But there is a chance that we will incur the wrath of the (Ottoman) authorities by naming it after Herzl”
Arieh Akiva Weiss: “This is true. We have to find a name that the goverment will agree to. And let us not forget that we are only building a small neighborhood (sec:!!!), a part of the big city of Jaffa. I suggest the name New Jaffa.”
Menahem Sheinkin: “I suggest the name Tel Aviv, which is the Hebrew name of Herzl’s book ‘Altneuland’, as it was translated by Nahum Sokolow. This is the name by which Herzl wished to express the hope for our future in the Land of Israel. In addition, Tel Aviv has a local, Arab sound and so the local population will be able to get used to it quickly”

On May 21, 1910 the committee accepted Menachem Sheinkin’s proposal to name the new neighborhood Tel Aviv.

The neighborhood of Spring Hill grew out of Old Jaffa and eventually through all-too-familiar tactics, took over the city:

Tel Aviv is Israel’s first and most important example of the apartheid-style colonialism which is central to Zionism. As historian Tom Segev wrote, “Segregation led to the establishment of Tel Aviv… by Jews tired of living among Arabs. Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion wrote that “The destruction of Jaffa, the city and the port, will happen and it will be for the best… When Jaffa falls into hell I will not be among the mourners.”

Driving Jaffa “into hell” was required in order to assure Tel Aviv’s dominance. As a result Jaffa, whose orange groves, factories and literary institutions made it the center of Palestinian life, had to be destroyed and its residents driven out. In 1948 Zionist military forces displaced 95% of Jaffa's Palestinians. Historian Ilan Pappe writes that the people of Jaffa were “literally pushed into the sea” to board fishing boats destined for exile as “Jewish troops shot over their heads to hasten their expulsion.” Soon after Zionist forces blew up and bulldozed three-quarters of Jaffa's Arab section.

Out of the 70,000 Palestinians who used to call Jaffa home, only 3,650 were allowed to stay. Many of Jaffa’s Palestinian residents fled to Gaza – which means the families of many of those killed and wounded in this year’s massacres by the Israeli Occupation Forces, as well as those suffering right now from Israel’s genocidal siege, came from Jaffa.

Their homes and property confiscated, the few remaining after 1948 were pushed into a ghetto surrounded by barbed wire patrolled by Israeli soldiers and guard dogs. In 1950 Jaffa was swallowed up by the Tel Aviv municipality. Some of the Palestinian workers remaining were forced to build the luxury hotels and condos that line Tel Aviv's beaches, but could be imprisoned if they were found in Tel Aviv after 6 p.m.

The ghetto into which the remaining Palestinians were pushed, while by far the poorest neighborhood in the city, is also a coastal neighborhood with some of the highest property value in the city. As a result 3,000 Palestinians face eviction right now so their homes can be torn down to provide exclusive housing for Jews so they can have easier access to the real Tel Aviv beach.

Exodus 14:1-3: And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they turn and encamp...by the sea. For Pharaoh will say of the children of Israel, They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in.

The Palestinians of Jaffa were pushed into the sea, and hundreds of thousands all over the land began their forced exodus.  Truly a catastrophe of Biblical proportions and worthy of remembrance.

Today, the government of Israel still attempts to remove all vestiges of the Palestinians who used to live on those lands.  They build concrete walls and restricted roads, they destroy villages, they make life so intolerable that Palestinians will leave of their own accord.  They travel through an invisible country.

Yuri Olesha, one of my favorite Soviet authors, wrote in The Cherry Seed:

The sun is setting. I'm heading east. I am traveling a double path. One path is accessible to the observation of everyone. A passerby sees a man walking along an empty, overgrown area. But what's going on with this peacefully walking man? He sees his shadow in front of himself. The shadow moves along the ground, extending into the distance. It has long, colorless legs. I traverse the vacant lot. The shadow rises along a brick wall and suddenly loses its head. The passerby doesn't see this. Only I see it. I step into a corridor between two buildings. The corridor is endlessly high, filled with shade. Here the soil is claylike, pliable, like in a garden. Toward me, along the wall, moving to the side, runs a stray dog. We pass. I look behind. The threshold behind is shining. There on the threshold, a solar flare momentarily covers over the dog. Then it runs off into the emptiness, and only now can I see its color--reddish.

All this happens in the invisible country, because in the country accessible to normal vision, something else is going on: a traveler meets a dog, the sun sets, the vacant lot turns green.

The invisible land is a land of attention and imagination. The traveler is not alone! Two sisters walk at his sides and lead the traveler by the hand. One sister is called Attention, the other, Imagination.

So what does this mean? Does it mean that, in defiance of everyone, in defiance of order and society, I create a world which submits to no laws save the shadowy laws of my own feelings? What does this mean? There are two worlds, the old and the new. And what world is this? A third world? There are two paths; but what is this third path?
...
[C]lear and bright is the day. The wind is blowning, making the light of day burn more brightly. The wind is rocking my tree, and it creaks with its lacquered limbs. Each of its blossoms rises and lies down again, rendering it now pink, now white. This is a kaleidoscope of spring...Five years ago you treated me to some olives, remember? Unrequited love makes the memory poorer and more clear. To this day I remember...I planted a tree in memory of the fact that you didn't love me.
...
In five years, on this spot--where there is now a vacant lot, ditches, usless walls--a concrete giant will rise up. My sister Imagination is an impulsive person. In the spring, they'll start laying the foundation...Yet, there in the invisible country, someday, the tree dedicated to you will bloom.

Tourists will come to the concrete giant.

They will not see your tree. Is it really impossible to make the invisible country visible?

This letter is imaginary. I didn't write it. I could have written it if Abel hadn't said what he said.

"The building will be laid out in a semicircle," said Abel. "The exterior of the semicircle will be filled in with a garden. Do you have imagination?"

"I have imagination," I said. "I see it, Abel. I see it clearly. There will be a garden here. And on that spot where we are standing will grow an olive tree."

Yes, I edited it a bit.  Take out 'cherry' and replace with 'olive' and it represents the same thing in a different context: if you will it (the transfer of the Palestinians), it is no dream.  They will be invisible, not even a memory, and we can imagine the land of milk and honey with no messy reality of another people living here, no cognitive dissonance, no myths to struggle to maintain.  Nevermind that we had to uproot their trees, shatter their lives, kill their children.

Surah 5 (The Feast): We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.

That sounds uncannily like something in the Talmud.  I think Sisters Attention and Imagination would agree that the two sides have more in common than they admit and should they recognize that shared humanity, olive trees may yet bloom in the Holy Land.  If you will it, it is no dream...

ntodd