my parents and sister came to visit for my graduation! we had the week prior to graduation off, so we spent the time traveling around israel/palestine which was a lot of fun. we stayed in a little hilltop village called shoresh just west of jerusalem, and traveled around via rental car which was amazing as i got to drive!
the western wall for shabbat sunset. cheap ethiopian food in downtown tel aviv. qumran caves on the shores of the dead sea where they found the qumran scrolls, the oldest copies of the old testament. floating on the dead sea. masada mountain, symbol of jewish independence. church of the holy sepulchre that marks the place Jesus was crucified. hiking through hezekiah’s tunnel – a 1.7km pitch dark water conduit that supplied the ancient city of david. shisha in jerusalem. nazareth. cana where Jesus performed his first miracle. tzfat, a hilltop ancient center of jewish mysticism/kabala and currently a magnet town for artists. random stop at mount meron to visit the much revered tomb of jewish mystic rabbi shimon bar yochai. mount of beatitudes and caperneum on the shores of the sea of galilee. tomb of the patriarchs (abraham and isaac) in hebron, palestine, and wandering the segregated “apartheid” and other streets of hebron’s old city and eating cheap chicken which was the family’s favorite day. church of the nativity in bethlehem. showing the family my clinical sites in bnei brak, kfar kama, afula, ashkelon and of course beer sheva. but its not about the places, it was about being with family which was so nice! thank you for coming:)
at the tomb of the patriarches, hebron, palestineglassware factory, hebronfamily
western wall, jerusalem
western wallchurch of the holy sepulchre, believed by some to be the exact site of christ’s crucifiction, jerusalemjerusalemchurch of the holy sepulchre, jerusalempilgrim rush at church of the holy sepulchreeast jerusalemjerusaelmjerusalemmount of beatitudes, galileetzfat, israel
there are two major definitions of israel. one is “israel proper” – which the majority of the international community views as fully legitimate and belonged to israel prior to 1967. in this israel, all citizens have equal rights under the law (at least in theory). then there is “greater israel.” this israel includes the palestinian territories which are occupied by the israeli military (the west bank), which is sprinkled with israeli settlements. in the west bank portion of greater israel, israeli citizens have all the rights they would in israel proper and often more, while millions of palestinian noncitizens have essentially no rights under the law despite the fact that they and their families have lived there for centuries. they are for the most part restricted from israeli controlled areas and roads even within the west bank itself, and their movement is often restricted by the israeli military even within palestinian controlled areas. thus, while israel proper is relatively generous with its rights for the part of the world in which it is located, the situation in greater israel is tantamount to apartheid.
there is a separation barrier (a large cement wall) that has been constructed over the last decade or so to separate israelis from palestinians. the problem is, the wall does not follow the border of israel proper. instead, it reaches deep into the palestinian territory to encompass various israeli settlements. a wall along a border is fine, but a wall that expropriates vast areas of land and intentionally and illegally isolates communities is not. the route of this wall is regularly being altered to include more land on the israeli side. palestinians who find themselves in the “seam” between israel proper and the wall are especially marginalized. despite the fact that there have been exceedingly few terrorist attacks originating in the west bank since the end of the second intifada, the new wall continues to be built under the israeli pretext of “security.”
the palestinian authority only has civil and security control of about 20% of the land in the west bank. the rest of the land is under the control of the israeli military. even in palestinian controlled areas, the israeli military regularly makes violent incursions in violation of the terms of the oslo accords, even when there is no security indication for doing so. children are regularly imprisoned for minor offenses or even for no known reason. under marshal law, israel does not need to file a charge to incarcerate palestinians for any period of time. it is always open season. regular extrajudicial killings of palestinian civilians by the israeli military almost never go punished or even appropriately investigated.
there are a few differences between this and other inequalities around the world. 1. – palestinians are the largest group of people in the world who are not citizens of any country. israel has complete control over who comes and goes from palestine, and many who have never done anything wrong are never allowed to leave, ever in their lives. other country’s populations certainly live in hardship and without a voice, but at least they are citizens of a recognized jurisdiction. most people in these other countries are at least in theory allowed to get passports and travel without requiring permission from some foreign government which almost almost by definition hates who they are. 2. – the israeli occupation of palestine is supported financially and protected in the international arena by the united states. no nation in the world receives more aid from the u.s. government than israel. i could drabble for days about how problematic this is, but suffice it to say that it is american’s business what israel is doing, like literally because we’re officially paying for it. sadly this is arguably mostly a function of a christian zionist strain of evangelicalism.
these are just very few of the myriad issues of inequality in the west bank, but i don’t believe most westerners or even israelis who are consciously or subconsciously neozionist (proponents of greater israel) understand the reality of these policies on the lives of palestinians. after personally spending quite a bit of time in palestine, it are these issues of restriction of movement and lack of due process under the law that really resonate with me. thus, i’m pro-palestine and anti-greater israel until some big changes happen to the status quo. not because i think one group of people is any better than another, but because apartheid is stupid.
israel is obsessed with security. arguably understandably so, considering the history of terrorism against it. but i think sometimes things go a little overboard. take security at ben gurion airport. if you so much as look at a security agent wrong they’ll pull you aside for a deeply probing questioning session. one level of security exists entering the airport area, and another before entering the terminal building. most tourists don’t ever even know about most of it, as they are waved through. but you get it if you’re alone and/or if you have “questionable” stamps in your passport, and/or if you have darker skin. the next layer is a very thorough questioning before checking in. for me, these discussions almost always devolved into them asking me why i had been to so many muslim countries. almost every time it was something like: “why would you visit egypt when you could visit (insert european country) instead?” they would keep probing, basically making me explain why i think muslims are people like the rest of us. this stench of bigotry was so predictable that it made me dread having to go to the airport. and normally airports are my favorite place ever. after all this they’ll give you a sticker with a number between one and six, six being the highest security “risk.” israelis and families get ones and twos, while arabs and those traveling alone get a five or six. so i pretty much always got a six.
sometimes they’ll deem it necessary to take you to another room for a more intimate check. during one of my visits to this facility in the basement of the terminal, they had me strip to my underwear and took my documents and wallet to another room. then they probed between my naked legs with a cold metal detector. as if they couldn’t already tell that there wasn’t much there. and they made me pull open my undergarment for a peek at the ol genital region. security is fine, but at that point it became clear to me that this enterprise is about more than just security. it is about making people feel small and dehumanized. i’m pretty lucky i only went through that once; many who are traveling completely legally go through it every single time, and 99% of palestinians are never allowed to travel through ben-gurion airport at all. notably, israel often bars entry even to american citizens without cause other than their ethnicity. they have also been known to have travelers suspected of being activists chose between logging in to their email on government computers or be deported.
the next step of the security process used to be a detailed search through one’s baggage. in the last year they’ve moved that to behind the scenes due to numerous complaints about people’s personal effects being paraded around in the open and obvious racial profiling. then, after checking in there is another regular security check of your person. the rigor of this is determined by your “risk” number. everyone needs to be at the airport no less than three hours early for all this. security almost always took the vast majority of that time for me. but i’m not complaining – it only just helps a person realize what other people, namely palestinians, go through every single day. some will believe that all that security is justified, and that’s fine. but i stopped believing that when they made me strip.
my last three selectives were radiology, otolaryngology and orthopedics, each for two weeks. interesting stuff, and quite relaxed schedule which is very nice!
i’ve also been able to do some things which were on my bucket list, like visit the israel museum in jerusalem which house the dead sea scrolls. beer sheva finally has its first ethiopian restaurant (there are many ethiopians here so it is surprising that it took this long for someone to open a restaurant). last weekend went to a hot spring spa called neve midbar in the negev desert south of beer sheva with some bros, as well as made one more trip to the taybeh brewery in the west bank, which i must say is one of my favorite locales in this part of the world, for what it represents. as glad as i am to be moving on, there are things about here that i’ll really miss.
i regularly hear proponents of israel assert that there is complete freedom of religion in israel. while israel unquestionably does have more religious freedom than say the territory controlled by the self-declared islamic state, i don’t think most westerners understand just how judaicized this place is. when compared to the west, there are some serious issues here with regard to religious persecution.
proselytizing for any religion other than judaism is illegal in israel.
while superficially the israeli government likes to cozy up to american christians, this probably has more to do with financial and political influence than anything else. many jewish israeli christians are harassed and intimidated on a regular basis. for example, it is not uncommon for local jewish christians to receive literature in the mail or over email explaining the perils of christianity. this makes it obvious that emails are screened, something only the government has the authority to do. at least a few times ultra-orthodox bouncer-types stood outside a bible study i was attending in a private home, and intimidated those coming and going with insults and sometimes even blocking their path. when asked, they said they were hired by the authorities to do so. i have friends who are messianic jews whose efforts to make aliyah (immigrate to israel – supposedly the “right” of any jew in the world) are being obfuscated directly due to the fact that they are christian. a few years ago the local church in beer sheva was ransacked by a mob of well-connected ultra-orthodox men, who were never held accountable for their crimes.
about 300 000 of the 1 000 000 ethnic jews who immigrated from the former soviet union are considered jewish enough to be israeli, but not jewish enough to be considered jewish by israel’s chief rabbinate. thus, many must leave the country to get married, etc. for many of these, it would seem to be because they are christians. in any case, what kind of misguided system lets rabbis decide what citizen’s rights are based on arbitrary religious definitions? i’m not saying it doesn’t happen and isn’t even worse elsewhere in the middle east; i’m saying it happens in israel.
and this is just relating to ethnic jews, citizens of israel. the challenges faced by israeli arabs, both christian and muslim, are myriad, and don’t even begin to compare to those faced by palestinians living under marshal law in the occupied territories. that every single jew can travel freely through checkpoints in bethlehem while local christians and muslims cannot is religious apartheid as far as i’m concerned. while it is true that it is technically about citizenship rather than religion, when any jew in the world can easily become an israeli citizen regardless of where they are from, but people whose families have lived in palestine/now israel for hundreds of years are barred from becoming israeli citizens except through birth, it is fundamentally about religion. there are books detailing the flight of christians from the holy land, and it is due to israeli policy, not islamization of the west bank, despite israeli efforts to frame it as the latter. and then there are the injustices faced by muslims because of their faith. even myself, a white american christian, am consistently asked by bigoted security guards at the airport why i would travel to muslim countries, why i am not scared to go to muslim countries, if i know any muslims etc. there is just an overwhelming undertone of racism and religious hatred toward muslims that sadly permeates much of israeli society, including its governmental institutions, and it is unequivocally wrong. one could go on and on with examples but suffice it to say – israel is a decidedly jewish state –the assertion that it is a bastion of religious freedom is not correct.
one day during march a big group of my medical school colleagues took a self-planned day trip in a bus up to the northern west bank cities of qalqilya and nablus. great to see these kids wanting to see life from the other side. we were joined by some medical professionals from the u.s. first stop was qalqilya, a palestinian city which is 95% surrounded by israel’s separation barrier. there is just one road in. major problems from a public health perspective, as the surrounding townsfolk now need to travel hours to get to the clinic or hospital, trips that used to take them 5 minutes. sometimes the one entrance to qalqilya is shut completely by the israelis for hours or even days at a time. we visited the only united nations relief and works agency (unrwa) hospital in the west bank, where the director of the hospital welcomed us with the customary long-winded speech and selection of sweets, and gave us a tour of the facilities. unrwa provides free healthcare to palestinians, provided they can get to the facilities, which often is the insurmountable obstacle. generally speaking, the challenge for healthcare in palestine is that it is disjointedly provided by a slew of intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations that do not integrate particularly well with each other. that and the barriers to access created by restriction of movement. qalqilya is host to palestine’s only zoo, a profoundly sad place. during the second intifada in the early 2000s the animals were starving to death despite the best efforts of the committed zookeeper. one day a grenade exploded and startled the zoo’s giraffe, who subsequently hit its head on a metal beam and died. the zookeeper became a taxidermist out of necessity, and today one can see the stuffed animals whichwere alive in better days gone by. vice news did a piece on these stuffed zoo animals.
next we headed east to nablus. unbeknownst to anyone on the bus, our tour guide had lined up another host, a palestinian liberation organization (plo) guy who had spent much of his life in israeli prisons. upon arrival in nablus we picked him up and were taken to the top floor of city hall, where we had a red carpet meeting with the mayor, who is also on the plo’s executive committee. he waxed poetically on the need for equality as well as peace, commenting and answering questions on current peace negotiations, while triple-life sized portraits of arafat and abbas looked down on us and the city of nablus spread below us. after all the unplanned formalities, we finally got the chance to wander around the streets of nablus, sampling its specialty desert kunafa, and peering into its secluded ancient courtyards and hammams.
nablus, palestinenablusnablusnablusnablusnabluskunafa, product of nablusnablus
one saturday while we were living up in the galilee we decided to make a little trip to the city of jenin in the west bank. jenin is at the northern tip of the west bank just across the border from afula, but the only people who ever visit are israeli arabs from the galilee who go to visit family. jenin was a hotbed during the second intifada; half the suicide bombers during that uprising came from jenin. during that time the city was occupied by israel with heavy tanks and artillery and a lot of people died. we wandered the bustling streets for some time, and had a meal of assorted salads on a rooftop restaurant overlooking the city.
one of the more interesting institutions in jenin is the freedom theater. there, an acting troupe seeks to resist the occupation through art rather than violence, and seek to guide the children of the jenin refugee camp through acting as therapy. its founder juliano mer-khamis, who was both jewish and palestinian, was unfortunately assassinated by a masked gunman on the streets of jenin in 2011. much speculation surrounds the motive for his death. too bad that the good guys usually seem to die too soon in this part of the world.
returning to israel from jenin turned out to be an adventure in itself. we took a taxi to the crossing, but palestinian registered cars cannot cross into israel so we got out to walk across. we discovered however, that though we walked into the west bank earlier that day at the same crossing, it was illegal to cross by foot in the other direction. so we had no choice but to catch a ride with someone in their car. over the next two hours as twilight fell, we begged people in cars to let us cross the border with them, to no avail. one of my classmates eventually became so exasperated that he walked toward the crossing, waiving his hands in the air and protesting in hebrew, despite the disapproving yells of the israeli soldiers who had their automatic weapons trained on him. eventually we convinced him to relent. we finally were able to convince an older arab gentleman to let us into his van for the crossing. while we waited he told us that he had been in palestine to get some dental work done: it is much cheaper in the west bank than in israel. our van was pulled aside for a “secondary inspection” – because we were in it. now we realized why no one wanted to give us a ride. apparently the only foreigners who cross this border are activists. we were all interrogated and patted down, and then directed to a holding area, where we sat for another two hours while they closed all the windows on the van and pumped it full of a gas, the identity of which was unknown to us. strange times at the border. we profusely thanked our driver for taking two hours out of his evening to help our sorry selves. just another day in palestine.
after finishing at the hospital in tel aviv one sunday afternoon i decided to take the bus up to jerusalem to check out the 5pm service at king of kings church in the heart of jerusalem. this church is the largest english speaking american-style evangelical church in israel, and is well known as the standard-bearer of evangelical christian zionism here. every week there are groups of american christian tourists visiting the church, “in the land” to “stand with israel.” a huge, plush auditorium in the basement of a shopping center and great audio-visual set-up. they have the contemporary evangelical consumer worship experience nailed – i quite enjoyed that part of it! great people, and they really do love Jesus which i believe is ultimately what is most important. as soon as the worship time ended however, politics came up and things inevitably started going downhill. the pastor couldn’t seem to help himself from raving about canadian prime minister stephen harper and how he is one of the only remaining world leaders defending israel, and how G-d is going to bless canada for standing for israel. ugh. he also raved about their prayer tower on the 14th floor where one can go and look out over ramallah (in the palestinian west bank) and pray that the “land would not be divided.” this church also regularly hosts conferences where church groups flown in from america listen to wacked-out end-times doomsday fiction authors like joel rosenburg float his weird eschatological fantasies about the impending destruction of the world as obvious “fulfillment of biblical prophecy.” if you can’t tell i’m a little skeptical of the scene.
don’t get me wrong, these are great people and i do believe that the vast majority are truly seeking to follow G-d. for most eschatology isn’t their exclusive spiritual focus. but it breaks my heart when christians in israel and who support israel preoccupy themselves with hypothetical future scenarios, while ignoring – or indeed more commonly extolling – the grave injustices that the government of israel flagrantly promotes – ie. the never-ending occupation of the palestinian territories and the refusal of many of the most basic human rights to the palestinians. i wouldn’t want to assume anything about anyone else’s Jesus, but the Jesus i follow is all about peace and loving our neighbors. He told us to love our enemies, not wall them in. i’ll even go out on a limb and say that the Jesus i follow, if he came to the middle east right now instead of 2000 years ago, might just identify as more palestinian than israeli. not to say that there is no significance in the fact that Jesus was a jew. but i believe that God intentionally made his appearance on earth as an underdog, and as part of a group of people living under occupation. also a fact that over 90% of the local christians here are arab palestinians, so we should really get some solidarity going.
to round out my quintessential middle-american-in-israel day, i cracked open a budweiser on the bus home and listened to some lady antebellum. one day was enough for me of this sub-culture; too bad it is not going away anytime soon.
thanks to much prodding from the class above us, we got christmas day 2013 off! christmas eve was spent at our hospital in bnei brak/tel aviv working – just another regular day in israel. as evening wore on we dropped the hint to our tutor that it was christmas eve – and she was all like “omg i totally didn’t even realize that – go!!” so we did, hopping on a bus to jerusalem and then another to bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ! the main border crossing into the west bank was closed due to “security concerns”, so we had to take the long way around, making what should have been a 20 minute drive into a 3 hour one. by the time we finally arrived at about 9 pm the party was in full swing! bethlehem is obviously a huge destination for christians from palestine and around the world this time of year, and there was a while lineup of ethnically varied choirs singing familiar carols in manger square, including my favorite, a composition of cute toddlers from south korea. we met up with about 20 of my classmates and had a nice feast of chicken burgers and beer in the restaurant on manger square. the funding for bethlehem’s holiday festivities comes mostly compliments of the us agency for international development. this year palestinian activists constructed a poignant christmas tree from spent tear gas grenades and barbed wire – it is truly sad that the birthplace of Christ remains under military occupation 2000-some years later, an sadder still that this occupation is endorsed and indeed propagated by so many christians in america. midnight mass occurred in the church of the nativity – prominent guests included the president of the palestinian authority mahmoud abbas and the european union’s foreign minister, whose motorcades of black swerving suvs almost ran us over as they arrived. some of us got tickets to go in but the rest of us watched on a big screen from outside. a group of us stayed in the home of a local who we had never met – lined up through some guy my friend andrew spent the whole day traipsing around the west bank trying to track down. turned out pretty well! christmas morning we grabbed some falafel for breakfast and payed a visit to bethlehem’s infamous “stars and bucks coffee”. we then went for a long walk through the aida refugee camp, which is circumscribed by the separation barrier, upon which is a plethora of fascinating art, including a selection of works by banksy. my favorite art on the wall is a large all-caps “love wins”, which is apt for christmas and any time of the year. thank you Jesus for freedom in all its forms, and viva palestine!
the separation wall, bethlehem, palestinebethlehemchristmas crew
one saturday during my pediatrics clerkship i was able to go into the west bank on a mobile clinic day with physicians for human rights – israel (phr-i). phr-i is an ngo that sends volunteer israeli physicians to do clinics in the west bank, has a free clinic in tel aviv for migrants without healthcare coverage, and sends physicians to check on prisoners – especially palestinian political prisoners – in israeli prisons. their overall goal is to see the israeli occupation of the palestinian territories end, a goal which i wholeheartedly support. the reality is that human rights violations and unacceptable disparity in access to basic healthcare will always exist in palestine as long as there is a military occupation. many accuse the group of political action under the guise of medical assistance, but many others realize that the fight for basic human rights for all is far more important than which geopolitical side you happen to be supporting. the occupation is bad for palestinian’s health – therefore as physicians we have an obligation to try to end it, end of story. politics and human rights are not mutually exclusive in this part of the world. many of the volunteer physicians go to the clinics in the west bank not because the palestinians particularly need a free clinic, but out of solidarity. they feel that the occupation is a disgrace and is ruining people’s lives, and they want as many palestinians as possible to know that there are israelis who also want it to end. they want to see the palestinian’s faces, and they want palestinians to see their faces. they want to humanize the conflict. they want to do something.
i am picked up in downtown tel aviv on a rainy saturday morning by a spunky elderly woman driving a rusted out volkswagon golf. though she is not a healthcare professional, she volunteers every saturday at the clinic, which is in a different town in the west bank each week. promptly, the car stalls, and won’t start. she starts freaking out, and we try getting the car to start for about 45 minutes to no avail. i say a little prayer and the car starts! i’m not going to claim it was a miracle, but i have no doubt that God is happy that these clinics are happening. then, it was off to the border, where we meet up with a group of about 20 physicians and take a minibus into the west bank.
while i go to the palestinian controlled areas (area a) of the west bank all the time, it is technically illegal for israelis. when they do enter as groups, it is almost always under the “protection” of the army. of course, phr-i refuses such “protection” (it would likely never be provided in the first place), as it is precisely what they view as the problem. israelis in area a are well received without a military escort – having one would indeed likely make things more dangerous. it is interesting to chat with the physicians about what other israelis, including their own families, think of their volunteering in the west bank. one doctor goes to the clinics in defiance of his wife’s wishes. she also wants the occupation to end but is legitimately scared for his life. like almost all israelis, she has never been to area a. the doctor rants about the ignorance of most israelis who, if they think about the west bank at all, think of it as a hell-hole that the army needs to control. these are typical israelis in tel aviv, not the settlers. we don’t even need to talk about the settlers. we talk politics, and we agree. this is the first time i’ve ever agreed with an israeli about politics. we start talking about traveling, and i tell him about my trip to lebanon. i’ve never talked to an israeli about lebanon before. he loves it. he would love to go to lebanon if he could.
we go to the town of attil north of tulkarm. we arrive and the town mayor gives a big speech as the group of doctors from israel sit shivering, drinking cardamom-laced arabic coffee beneath a giant photo of yasser arafat. it is honestly beautiful. these two groups of people are supposed to hate each other. no israeli in their right mind likes yasser arafat. but when we choose to swallow our pride, the hate dissipates, and we find ourselves welcomed. hate is often for policies, not people. phr-i is welcomed with open arms by the leadership of every palestinian town they have ever gone to. i spend the day mostly looking into children’s ears with a pediatrician.
the executive director of phr-i, a bro named ran cohen, comes along to hang out at the clinic that day. really cool guy. big white-man afro. gives me numerous high fives. he is at the forefront – indeed phr-i is in many ways the vangaurd – of the “leftist” human rights movement in israel. you know there is something wrong with the perspective of most of society if the fact that you support human rights automatically makes you a “leftist.” the israeli knesset (parliament) is trying to pass a law that would ban ngo’s that are anti-nationalist. this is widely perceived to be an attack on ngo’s that oppose the occupation. ran cohen is the real patriot, fighting for what is right whatever the government legislates. remember, all these israeli physicians are breaking the law just by coming to these clinics in area a. i love it! i give him another high five, just because i can. he’s quoted in news publications all the time. his girlfriend is cool too. she directs documentaries.
at the checkpoint on the way out of the west bank, our minibus is stopped and the young israeli soldier asks the one muslim woman on the bus with a higab to step outside the bus for further questions. this woman is a speech pathologist who lives in israel and was translating for the physicians. racial profiling happens all the time, and one typically just begins to acquiesce to it. but not on this minibus. ran cohen announces that if they need to question the woman in the higab further, they’ll need to question all of us. we all get off the bus. ran has a good long talk with the soldier. it is inspiring to see israelis who care about these issues. in israel, these are my people.
