Bil'in

You wouldn’t know it from the photo, but the girl and guy above don’t care for each other much. The scene is the West Bank village of Bil’in, and the protestor (probably from Europe or the U.S.) is trying to take a shield away from an Israeli soldier. The picture almost seems gentle, and so it is not representative of what was actually happening. On the other hand, it reminds me of Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” and so maybe it actually is representative of what was happening. What do the Sistine Chapel and the outskirts of a Palestinian village have in common? They are places where hands create.

Speaking of hands, just a few miles from Bil’in and many centuries earlier we’re told that Jesus, during a confrontation of his own, used his hands to create. Face to face with religious leaders and an adulterous woman they had cornered, Jesus listened as they said, “In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

What the men said was true; the law commanded that a stone, perhaps many stones, fly at this woman until she was a bloody corpse. In response Jesus bent down and used his finger to write in the earth. Straightening up a moment later he said to the leaders something like, “If any of you have lived a pure life, go ahead and hurl a rock at her.” He then bent back down and continued writing. We’re never told what he wrote, but when one by one the religious leaders had walked off and only he and the woman remained, he asked the woman, “Has no one condemned you?” No one had, and so Jesus continued, “Neither do I. Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Throughout the ages and in every place, the movements of hands—and sometimes their stillness—have left lines in sand, in history, and on people’s faces. Like the soldier and the protestor, or Jesus and the adulterer, all of us are participants in an ongoing creation, which is to say that there is a little Michelangelo in all of us. Or maybe there is a lot?

In any case, our hands create, and they are at their best when connected to a mind and heart that cares. Just ask a 2,000-year-old adulterer.

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For an image of a man throwing a stone, this one a Palestinian in the village of Bil'in, click on "Anger"

Protests and demonstrations can at times be a little extreme in both method and message.  For example, there are sometimes tragically far right Christians on street corners who spew verbal manure into bullhorns, the better to amplify their messages of judgment (and nothing else).  Or sometimes, like at a 1995 NOW rally on the National Mall in Washington DC, there are women who display loud slogans on bare breasts—which has the effect of sending at least one other woman, who didn’t know she would stumble upon this while on family vacation, scurrying for a detour as she covers her children’s eyes.

Perhaps placards make for better mediums than bullhorns or breasts, but here too things can go array.   A demonstration becomes more a spectacle than a message when jutting above the crowd are placards exclaiming “Exterminate Terrorists” (at a pro-Israel rally) or “2-4-6-8, Israel is a terrorist state!” (at a pro-Palestinian rally).  Such demonstrations become pep rallies for those who already embrace the cause, but they don’t reach those outside.

And then there is the occasional placard that is factually problematic.  This photograph, taken at a demonstration in the Palestinian village of Bil’in, offers an example.  Mandela, unlike King and Gandhi, didn’t believe nonviolence was a moral imperative, and he was willing to employ violence when he thought it more effective.  He writes in his book Long Walk to Freedom:

In India, Gandhi had been dealing with a foreign power that ultimately was more realistic and farsighted.  That was not the case with the Afrikaners in South Africa.  Nonviolent passive resistance is effective as long as your opposition adheres to the same rules as you do….For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.

Mandela had much respect for Gandhi, even choosing him when Time magazine asked him to write about one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.  In 2007 he would even say that “Gandhi's message of peace and nonviolence holds the key to human survival in the 21st century.”  But I wonder what he’d say about this placard?

In Barack Obama’s landmark speech in Cairo today, after rightly chastising those in the Muslim world who deny the Holocaust and peddle harmful stereotypes about Jews, he went on to say this:

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people—Muslims and Christians—have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations—large and small—that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

This speech was a breath of fresh air.  It marks not only the first time I heard a President describe the situation for Palestinians as “intolerable”; it also is the first time I saw a President who really seemed to mean it.  Obama’s words will have ruffled the feathers of hundreds of thousands of hard-line Israelis (and not a few U.S. Congressmen).  But these Israelis—and this is important to understand—are not the only Jews in Israel.  There are other Jews who have been yearning for an American President to say just such a thing (and to mean it).  There are others who have refused, as Obama says the U.S. has refused, “to turn their backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.”

One such person is Olga Ginzbourg, who you see in this photograph pleading with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Bil’in.  The village is an example of why Israel’s ongoing occupation is intolerable: half of Bil'in's agricultural land has been stripped from it in order for Israel to build an illegal settlement and a separation barrier; it has lost the ability to sleep soundly because of frequent midnight raids meant to harass its residents; and just a few weeks ago it lost a son, who was protesting nonviolently, when a solider slammed a teargas canister directly into his chest.

To read an article I wrote about Olga, recently published in Tikkun magazine, click on "An Israeli in Bil'in".  Voices like hers are brave, essential, and in urgent need of buttressing by balanced U.S. policy.  They also illustrate the power of travel—even journeys of only a few miles, especially when they take you from places like Tel Aviv to a tiny Palestinian village. 

For a four-minute YouTube video narrated by an Israeli woman who also yearns for a more balanced U.S. policy and which shows scenes of occupation, click on "Letter to Obama"

I was struck by this soldier's eyes.  It was late November 2006 and I was photographing a protest in the West Bank village of Bil'in, where Palestinians, along with Israeli and international activists, were protesting the route of Israel's Separation Barrier.  The barrier had separated the Palestinian village from more than half of its land, and the protest, carried out each Friday afternoon, was a largely nonviolent response to this confiscation.  During these demonstrations (which continue still today) a palpable and sometimes frightening tension filled the air.  The stress, of course, is handled differently by each person.

The soldier pictured here is an Israeli who had likely been tasked many times before with keeping the protestors from crossing the barrier, and in the three hours I saw him he never seemed fully present.  As much as one can know another through mere observation, I thought he was gentle and kind.  His watering eyes, his forced smile, his entire body language  indicated that he didn't like what was happening to this village.  And so the conflict this day was not only taking place in the fields of Bil'in; it was also occurring in the heart and mind of a soldier.