By Anita O Pinion
In 2006 -2007 I visited both the West Bank and Israel. This was part of a personal solo world tour.
I chose to go to these two places because I wanted to educate myself on the realities of Israel, Zionism, antisemitism and the occupation of Palestinian territory.
The impetus in getting a personal education on these subjects was because at home I was part of a progressive group, and my friend in that group was accused of being antisemitic by a Jewish couple. He brought up the subject of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. He pressed on to assert that Israel was a terrorizing force to both Gaza and the West Bank. He was asked to leave from this progressive group and accused of being antisemitic.
I was appalled that a progressive group would allow and support such an accusation of antisemitism from a person who was clearly upholding progressive values. How innocent I was then.
What is the blowback every time the holocaust/antisemitism card is played on someone who is legitimately criticizing the atrocities done by Israel and its supporters? They just created fertile soil for more people to become antisemitic. It can be taken as proof that Jews are all those antisemitic tropes that are vile.
The critics are silenced by a people so wounded that they cannot come out from behind the shield of victimhood that labels all criticism as an attack on Jewish identity. A shield that fends off all perceived critics as enemies. A shield created from the generational pain of persecution.
I was able to stay with hosts at their homes in both Israel and The West Bank. The hosts from Israel tended to be left or progressive most likely because hosting through Servas encourages global community and not Zionist supporters unless you state you are a Zionist. You can be Zionist and be progressive, but it is a bit tricky to explain depending on who you’re talking too. Obviously, the Zionist progressives in the group I belonged to had not melded the two ways of thinking well like my Israeli hosts had.
I was graciously taken by my Palestinian host to Hebron, Ramallah, The Wall, and various small communities separated by checkpoints in the West Bank. I stayed with a family for a few days due to snow blocking roads and It quickly was apparent that Palestinians were under a great occupying force that subjected them to daily atrocities, humiliations, and constant control of their lives and taking of land.
You have heard about the atrocities if you have been paying attention over the years, even slightly to information through venues such as Al Jazeera or Democracy Now!, Or possibly you are a reader of Noam Chomsky. It doesn’t take much to find information that could give you some kind of feeling of the oppressive situation that Palestinians endure under Israeli occupation.
I was also hosted by Jewish peace workers in the West Bank and in Israel. Many Israeli Jews are working to create peaceful support for Palestinians. I’d call these people Progressive Zionists. Yet they are considered suspect in their own country as being sympathizers to a people, the Palestinians, who are said to not deserve the land and homes they have lived on and in for centuries.
The symbol of a key being handed to the next generation is in many art pieces in the West Bank. The key is a widely used symbol of the Nakba, as many Palestinians kept the keys to their homes when they were forced into exile in 1948.
Yea, I’d be a nervous Israeli also when I know that the people who were pushed out of their homes in exile still hang on to the key of their ancestors with intent on returning. Who else would know better than Jews about that feeling of homeland than an exiled people like the Jews who wanted for hundreds of years to return to what they considered their homeland.
My Palestine host’s wife was a teacher and explained to me through her daughter translating how the West Bank was being carved up and fractured by settlers illegally occupying the territory.
One market area we walked through was a corridor wide enough for one truck to pass through, and had a metal netting spanning overhead, attached to the four story buildings above. You could see that the netting held chunks of concrete in it. These were large chunks thrown down from the settler apartments above, with the intention to injure or kill any Palestinians walking the market street below. Part of the market was also totally shuttered. It had been taken over by the settlers who were inching their way into possession of the area.
I was brought to the Ibrihimi Mosque and saw the bullet holes that were left in 1994 when Baruch Goldstein, a Zionist extremist from the far-right Kach movement, carried out a massacre in al-Ibrahimi Mosque (the Cave of the Patriarchs) in Hebron. Goldstein entered the sanctuary and opened fire at praying Muslims with an automatic weapon, killing 29 of them and injuring about 150 others. Later that day, during and after the funeral processions of the victims, there were violent clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and occupation forces, and more Palestinians were killed.
One Palestinian man I met was getting funding through Hamas to put playgrounds on rooftops so the children could play and would not be in danger when Israeli soldier’s saw them on the streets and be harassed or possibly shot if a child threw rocks at them.
https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1652605
I could go on by just repeating what any good news source has reported on the apartheid and murders and oppression of the Palestinian people by Israeli Zionist forces and settlers. All this is has been supported by US administrations, the US government, and particularly by Christian Zionists in the US.
The day I read that Hamas was lobbing hundreds of rockets and capturing civilian Israelis and killing many, I knew that the Christian Evangelical Zionists must be joyous. Their self fulfilling prophesy was even closer at hand now. Jesus was coming for sure.
“For Christian Zionists, what happens to the Jews and Palestinians is, to put it very mildly, collateral damage.”
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/rcna121481
Israel has no friend in Christian Zionists but they use them never the less to defend their righteous take over of the West Bank and Gaza.
The Christian’s Zionists use the Israel – Palestinian rivalry and play the holocaust/antisemitism card along with Israel, because once the biblical, “war to end all wars” comes on in full force and has killed all the Jews and Muslims and any other non-Christians, Jesus will finally come down from heaven in the “second coming” and rule forever.
Warning…I’m going bonkers here.
God! You can’t make this sh*t up. Oh, wait a minute, God did make this sh*t up, or more accurately the interpreters of the Bible made this sh*t up. I mean Jesus was the “Prince of Peace,” so he couldn’t have made this sh*t up. Ya know, the sh*t about if all these people kill each other then “He” will come back.
I’m all for Jesus being on earth. According to accounts he was a pretty good guy. It’s just that I fear for his life and that he may be crucified again, for advocating for the poor as an evil socialist, or for calling everyone to love one another and then outed (mistakenly or not) as a homosexual, so that he is further ostracized with a crown of thorns labeled “gay faggot.” Not to mention the scandal of having a relationship with a prostitute all the while as he is claiming to be the Son of God.
And if he were to be crucified again well…you know… we’re back where we were 2000 years ago. And with what is happening in Palestine right now it may be that we are anyway.
Now if all of what I’ve said gets out there it will be no surprise that I’ll be accused of antisemitism by Zionists and at least a few Jews. I will also be going to hell according to evangelical Christians because of the blasphemy I have done to God by saying Sh*t in the same sentence as God. Oh, there I did it again. Oh, and also I implied that the Bible possibly has some made up interpretations.
Here is my version of The TRUE Second Coming. I made this sh*t up so as far as I’m concerned, it’s just as valid as the Bible’s interpretation of the end times.
I always said to my students when I’d tell them a tall tale and they would ask, “Is that true?”
“Hey, everything I make up is true.”
“It’s your decision whether to believe it by just taking my word for it, or make the choice to get more evidence and reliable information, just so I don’t try to manipulate you. And that’s why research and science matters.”
Obviously, I was a science teacher.
Here’s my version of the TRUE Second Coming
The TRUE Second Coming
By Anita O Pinion
I was born for this time. Not only as a witness to the transformation of a world in chaos but as a participant and contributor in bringing into the world a way of being that celebrates life, love, creativity and community. It is the way of participating in the “TRUE” Second Coming.
The planet will make it through this dramatic change, with or without humanity, Its form, its appearance, and its character will evolve until the stellar sun engulfs it, eons from its present position in the universe.
And we?… humanity? We have a bright future in the evolution of Self.
Our destiny is not fixed but fluid in every moment’s decision each one of us makes.
Participate in life, in love, in a forgiveness that recognizes the child within us all yet holds accountable the adult we choose to become. Participate in everything that cuts to the core by being real, authentic, and connected to all that is alive.
Do not revel in a Second Coming. Revel in the transformation, in the birthing of a new way of being on this planet, in this universe, in this realm of existence. As in birth, blood will spill in the process. Hold on, hold dear, breathe deeply, and know that pain is necessary to awaken and give birth to the new way of being in the world.
Sing, dance, love, grieve, create, fearlessly give the best that you have to give. The world needs your love and creativity more than ever now.
Contribute your gifts from a place of love and not of fear. It is when you give of yourself in this life, give of the love you were born from, give from your deepest being, that you then become the conduit of God in physical form.
That is the TRUE Second Coming.
Photo by:
Anita O Pinion
January 2007
Ramallah, West Bank
Graffiti on one of the main streets of Ramallah, the capital of Palestine, Santa is hugging a sad child who’s holding the Palestinian and Iraqi flags: he represents those children who grew up in war conditions and don’t know the serenity that every child on Earth has a right to experience. The Palestinian child is asking Santa Claus on the backdrop of a US star from the US flag, for the gift of peace. I ask myself, Why Santa depicted in a Muslim territory? Why a yellow star from the US flag? Think about those questions.
