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Issue: June, 1988

. . . In 1984 my belief in Israel's right to exist was profound. . . I recognized the contradiction in my values early, and chose to put a blind eye to it. Rationality was not for me, not on this issue! . . . On this one issue. . . there would be no discussion, no debate. Period.

IN 1984, MY BELIEF IN ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO EXIST WAS PROFOUND. It was a contradiction in my then-pacifist value system, and I was not alone in this contradiction. People who were draft counselors in the mid-60's have told me of assisting young men in obtaining Conscientious Objector status during the Viet Nam war because the young men knew they could not kill, only to hear these same young men express an intense interest in fighting for Israel in the June '67 war!

From my youngest years, as I learned of the Holocaust and came to see and wonder about racism, anti-Semitism, I was a supporter of Israel. I defended it vociferously, moving through periods of outrage, romanticism and militancy, and because of my own life experience, developed a deep identification with the Jewish experience of oppression. I recognized the contradiction of my otherwise pacifist values early, and chose to put a blind eye to it. Rationality was not for me, not on this issue! My politics were a product of my environment, but I was willing to stretch the limits of my insulated society. My left-leaning instincts were solidly in touch with oppression, exploitation. I had spent many years doing good grass-roots political work in my communities. On this one issue however, there would be no discussion, no debate. Period.

INSULATED BY SMALL TOWN POLITICS. . .
I was able to hold those beliefs for most of my life partly because in the small towns in which I lived there were only very small, nearly invisible political communities, and few challenged those views. Information to the contrary was not being widely disseminated. And later, when information became available, I closed my ears. "Remember the Holocaust". . . "It must not happen again." I felt as Eli Wiesel does to this day, that there is something ineffable, almost supernatural, about anti-Semitism, and that it would last as long as there was one Jew on earth. Wiesel was a saint. He was the VOICE. He was the TRUTH. Unlike Wiesel, I had been willing to criticize Israel's aggressive military policies, but only among Jews, where I had felt the issue was "safe."

. . .BUT ONLY FOR A WHILE. . .
At 39, with both my children in college, I moved to Berkeley in 1984 to attend college myself. Now, how long can one of good instincts live with blinders on in Berkeley? Oh, I tried! Soon after I arrived, however, I contacted Livermore Action Group, the group with which I had done anti-nuclear political work before coming here, and there I met Michael, whose views on Israel were diametrically opposed to mine, and who didn't hesitate to challenge me, to debate me. We spent the best part of our first afternoon together arguing and debating the history of Israel; the need, the result.

He told me things I had never heard or considered before (because I had chosen my books carefully) . . . things that were difficult to refute or ignore. He told me of the people who had always lived in that land.

"Palestinians? But they chose to leave the land, while the Jews begged them to stay" I said.

He spoke of how these people were massacred, and forced off their citrus and olive groves, that many of them died of starvation that first year in tents and caves, and in the few refugee camps.

"Massacres? Torture? Forced expulsion? Don't tell me you think a people who have so often suffered those very things, and were the primary victims of the Holocaust, would be capable of inflicting those things on another people!" . . . "I don't care that Israel was created of imperialism. It had to be—where else could Jews go, and how else could they make a nation?". . . "Zionist lobbying in other nations to keep Jews out so they could only go to Israel? No! No!" And finally, that last refuge of a Zionist caught in the contradiction, "You must be anti-Semitic! . . . . Oh, you're Jewish? Aha, a self-hating Jew!"

I had heard enough that day, however, to begin serious soul-searching. He was articulate, knowledgable, and gentle in his approach. He spoke of it only so long as I wanted to do so. There were many qualities about him I found quite attractive, even compelling, and we began to see each other.

. . . UNTIL THE MOMENT OF RECKONING. . .
He didn't mention the subject again until he asked me several months later if I would like to go to a memorium for the victims of the massacres at Sabra and Chatilla. I knew, of course, the gruesome story of these Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, where between 1500 and 3000 women, children and old men were murdered over two days and two nights in 1982. The murderers were Lebanese Phalangist troops, sent into the camps by the Israeli army to "clean them out". The Israeli army lit flares so the killing could continue through the night, and stood guard at the camp exits to prevent the victims from fleeing (the fighters had all evacuated from Lebanon several weeks previously). I knew this. I had decided it was an aberration. I understood that the My Lai massacre in Viet Nam had not been an aberration, but was an extension of American military policy in Viet Nam, yet chose not to understand that Sabra and Chatilla were the same. It was a "mistake" and I felt sad about it and sick at heart, so I went to the memorium with Michael.

There were speakers presenting ancedotes and analyses. I was by then having difficulty blocking or refuting what I was hearing, yet was reluctant to let the information in. Palestinian speakers spoke of refugees, of terrorism by 18-year-old Israeli soldiers who have absolute power over any and all Arabs in their sight, and who abuse that power as a matter of course. They spoke of the invasion of Lebanon and the subsequent tens of thousands of deaths, of torture in prisons in Israel and the Occupied Territories, of collective punishment and theft of land. And they spoke of America's complicity in and funding of these atrocities. It was more than I could absorb—it was like reading forecasts of nuclear disasters. There was too much. The death and destruction figures were too high, the horrors too numerous. I couldn't absob it, and couldn't let it in . . . . How convenient . . .

. . . PROVIDED BY THE DANCE BRIGADE . . .
What I could not block out was the cultural event of the evening—the Dance Brigade, in one of their first performances after separating from the Wallflower Order. With a musical background of a slow, steady dirge-like sound, they came onto the stage, one woman holding something in her arms, the others surrounding her. They went to a spot mid-stage and began to dig for something. The background was becoming noisy, cacophonous, as the women finished digging. The woman with her arms full laid to rest the infant she had been carrying, obviously dead from the bombing of the city, which was even then taking place around them. They fell together to the ground in grief and mourning, cradling their own babies, then arose as one, sweeping around to point their arms, now cradling guns, at the sky—at the Israeli airplanes which were killing their children.

This short work, which probably encompassed not more than 15 minutes, did what reason and intellectual argument had failed to do. I was devastated. All my work to keep Palestinians a distant abstract concept, without life, without feeling, without grief or happiness or terror, was destroyed in those few minutes. The women on the stage brought to life a Palestinian woman whose child had been killed. These women touched my heart with the commonality of our experiences. I, too, am the mother of children, grown now, but I still remember their smallness, their helplessness, their total dependence on me to keep them safe. But I never faced bombs, or bullets, or a soldier with a gun who could shoot whom he pleased, including my baby.

The Dance Brigade brought Palestinian people to life for me. Art touches one's heart, where denial is more difficult. Now new dilemmas arose for me. This woman had lost her child to an air force which bombed their city, killing civilians indiscriminately, and most painful of all, deliberately. Bombing and killing civilians by the tens of thousands? Israel? How many died? 20,000 in three months, 90% civilians?!! What was accomplished? Did it matter what was accomplished? I knew that if I found lies among the explanations, and by then I knew I would, it would be a matter of starting all over in my Middle East education, beginning with the earliest Zionist movement. That is exactly what I had to do, ultimately.

. . . AND NOW, THE LEARNING BEGINS . . .
The more I learned, the deeper the pain, and the deeper the realization that I had managed to shield myself for a very long time from truths I had not had the courage to examine. Another look at Eli Wiesel, my saint, my patron, produced a picture that sickened me to my heart. He knew, all along he knew, what was being done in his name, and his excuse for not speaking, for not crying out in rage against it, was, he said, that "In order to criticize Israel, you must first be in a position of power to possess all the information." I did not have to have been "in a position of power" in the Third Reich to know absolutely that their policies were obscene and wrong; nor that America's policy of destroying the Vietnamese, or the Nicaraguan revolution, were wrong. We cannot turn our backs on horror, murder and torture done in our name simply because the nation committing these acts arose partially from the horror of Nazi Europe. How could I, who work hard to make the world a more just place, have kept myself in such deliberate ignorance? How hard it is to live with the knowledge of the many years that passed and the suffering that occurred, paid for in large part by my tax money, while my indulgence in deliberate ignorance went so far, not to alleviate that suffering, but to perpetuate it!

For helping me see the world through more compassionate and rational eyes, I thank you, Michael and Dance Brigade . . . I think.

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