Day 2 at JVP: Anti-colonial visions, border fences and the right of return

Today is Saturday, March 14th, the second day of the Jewish Voice for Peace meeting in Baltimore.  I woke up and immediately went down to the lobby to get my complimentary breakfast at 7:30 a.m.  There were miniature yogurt parfaits, scrambled eggs, and bagels with salmon.  There was also real cream for the coffee — not just half & half.  I took my breakfast back up to my room, because I was not yet fully presentable.

************************

The first event, at 9 a.m., was a panel of speakers in the big meeting room.  It was entitled “Visions of Freedom” and it was great.  Andrea Smith spoke.  She is a scholar of Native Americans, as well as an anti-violence activist.

She talked about how, when the Europeans first came to the new world, they had an idea in their minds that the Indians did not truly understand how to “work.”  The Europeans felt like the Indians were simply lounging about, fighting with each other in a recreational sort of way, and lazily gathering food from the forest.  The Europeans believed that the Indians were not really human beings…  Only human beings who “worked” were entitled to “own” land.

Andrea Smith thinks the idea of “owning” land is a made-up construct anyway.  It’s part of the colonial mentality to think that land is “property” that can owned by this person or by that person.  She said we should free our imaginations.  She doesn’t want us to end up creating just another, typical nation-state in Israel/Palestine.  She wants us to create a completely new system, one that has nothing to do with colonialism.  She wants us to truly feel that this is a possibility, and that we really could create something new.  In this sense, she wants us to decolonize our minds.

Then Sa’ed Adel Atshan spoke.  He is a scholar at Brown University (my grandfather’s alma mater.)  Mr. Atshan said that his goal for Israel/Palestine was the creation of a binational, secular state.  Then he spoke about our mentalities as activists… He reminded us that we need to be “active.”  We are like bystanders, watching a crime being committed. The perpetrator of the crime (Israel) wants the bystander (us) to do nothing. But the victim (Palestinian civilians) really need the bystander (us) to be active.

On another note, he also said that he didn’t like it when people expressed generic “optimism” about the future.  He seems to feel that optimism can, in fact, be a type of wishy-washy complacency…  Therefore, we shouldn’t think of ourselves as being optimistic.  We should think of ourselves as having “vision.” That is the stronger way to be.

*****************************

We had a break in the lobby, with snacks (granola bars, fruit and coffee.) Then, I went to a presentation about the fence on the U.S. border with Mexico.  It was neat.  First we heard from an Indian, Amy Juan, a member of the Tohono O’odham tribe, whose reservation is in the Southwest.  She said her tribe was the second largest tribe, after the Navajos.  The U.S. – Mexico border fence now cuts through their tribal land.  She remembers being a kid, when there was just a low-key, chain link fence there, and the Indians could cross back and forth without stress.  Now, at age 28, she is part of the last generation that remembers not having to deal with the anxiety of the border.  These days, when members of her tribe cross the border, they are asked, “are you a U.S. citizen?”  There’s violent harassment by the border patrol police. Things have settled down a bit, though, since she and some others became organized, and vocal.

Todd Miller, another activist, spoke about the financial motives for building and maintaining the expensive border fence between the U.S. and Mexico.

Some parts of the border consist of a high-tech “smart fence” — fancy towers and movement sensors.   In 1994 there were 4,000 border patrol agents, and now, there are 23,000 agents.   Amy Juan also mentioned that some members of her tribe hope to get $65/hr. welding jobs, working on the fence.

Raul al-Qaraz Ochoa, another activist, also in Tucson, Arizona, spoke about the frightening practice of police grabbing Mexican nationals and deporting them from the U.S. back to Mexico.  The border police are allowed to stop people and demand that they present their papers.  He and some other activists have begun forming human chains, and circling police vehicles, holding hands, when the border police are trying to take people away.

***************************

For lunch, we had sandwiches, potato chips, apples and cookies, and sodas and coffee to drink.  Then, at 1:00 p.m. I attended another big talk in the main conference room.  This was about “The Right of Return.”  The moderator, Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark, interviewed an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man.  The Palestinian activist, Basem Sbaih (from the group “Badil”) provided the following breakdown of where most of the Palestinian refugees are currently living:

40% Jordan

9.2% Lebanon

10% Syria

17% West Bank

23.8% Gaza Strip

Most of them are living near the original borders of Mandate Palestine.

Liat Rosenberg, the Israeli woman (from the group “Zochrot”) explained that the right of return is a taboo topic among (Jewish) Israelis.  The average Jewish Israeli thinks that if the Palestinians are ever allowed to come back to their villages (or houses/apartments) then the state of Israel will be completely overrun.  She said, “in Israel there is no distinction between being a Jew and being a Zionist.”

Participating in the Israeli feminist movement helped her, personally, to separate emotionally from Zionism. Now she thinks that Zionism, as a movement, is inherently too violent.  She thinks Israelis have to acknowledge the right of return.  If they can’t—or won’t—do this on their own, then the international community needs to apply pressure, to compel the Israelis to assume responsibility.

Mr. Sbaih and Ms. Rosenberg seemed unsure how the right of return could be honored or logistically implemented.  Ms. Rosenberg wondered about the Palestinians who were relatively poor at the time of expulsion, and who perhaps didn’t own any property…  What sort of compensation would they receive, compared to much richer Palestinians who were expelled from the same village?  Mr. Sbaih pointed out that, originally, most of the village land was communally owned.  He also said that villages of 1,000 people were now represented by 20,000 descendants!

After this, I felt as if I had entered a trance.  I took the afternoon off, and went on the treadmill in the fitness center, and then relaxed in my room.  Later on, in the evening, members of the New York City JVP group met at the bar in the Hyatt lobby— “Bistro 300,” for drinks.  I had a bourbon.  It was nice to see the familiar faces from the New York group.  Then I had room service dinner alone in my room, for the second night in a row.  I ate a delicious steak with mashed potatoes.  There was a planned evening event, of artistic performances.  It looked like it might be good, but I was too tired to go.