Iraqis throughout the Middle East remain unregistered, uncounted, unassisted and unprotected. But Alice Rothchild visits the Collateral Repair Project in Amman, begun in 2006, which serves 10,000 families a year and teaches everything from Capoeira, to music, to English, to mind-body medicine.
About 50 protesters in Amman oppose Jordan’s multi-billion-dollar pipeline deal with Israel in a demonstration at the Parliament, observed by Alice Rothchild. One sign: “The gas of our enemy [Israel] is occupation.” But police soon move in to scatter the demonstration.
A natural gas pipeline from the sea through Jordan is Israel’s latest effort to normalize relations with its Arab neighbors. But Palestinians resist. In Amman, Alice Rothchild visits an exhibit of remarkable friezes by Palestinian artist, Abdul Hay Mosallam. “They killed me and my killer denied me while turning cold in my grave,” are the words on the Gaza piece.
Alice Rothchild visits a church in Amman that has gained a regional reputation for caring for refugees from Syria and Iraq, many of whom fled ISIS atrocities and are afraid to return. “Forty percent of the women are widows and many refugees have experienced unimaginably severe and chronic trauma from abuse.”
Alice Rothchild travels to Jordan on a trip to report on refugee conditions and is struck by the lack of omnipresent security that she experiences in Israel. She wants to yell out to security, “I’m over here guys, in Jordan. On the east side of the Jordan River!!! It’s me!”
The recent fury and attacks on Ilhan Omar and her forthright statements exposing and criticizing the role of the Israel lobby come at time when issues of political framing are roiling Jewish and progressive communities. Alice Rothchild says the controversy further clarified her understanding that Palestine solidarity work is most effectively accomplished within an anti-racist, anti-white supremacist framework.
Alice Rothchild says it is no longer acceptable for progressives and liberal minded Jews to ignore racist policies and practices in the Land of Israel that are increasingly condemned in the United States.
In the splintering of the movement around the Women’s March, Alice Rothchild writes, “Today, the angry chorus of accusations are coming from white Jews who are accustomed to the privileging of their victimhood and the power of their class. The voices of Jews of color have been largely sidelined from this conversation.”
Alice Rothchild is told never to travel to Vienna, for she will not be welcomed by the Jewish community there. Why? Because she supports the BDS movement, and “Boycott is a form of violence.”
When kids are brown does anyone care? The “tender age detention centers” for immigrant children in the U.S. are parallel to detention by Israel of Palestinian children. The arrests are highly dangerous and traumatizing, leading to epidemics of bed wetting, anxiety, depression, PTSD, agitation, and dropping out of school.