An uncomfortable ride

Here's another picture from my trip to Israel, courtesy of fellow tourist Betsy (foreground), her husband Steve (on the camel with me), and our camel-ride-guide, a West Bank Jewish settler originally from Grand Rapids Michigan (picture-taker). Despite my big grin in this picture, I was actually quite uncomfortable on the camel (it's a very wide body!), and also quite uncomfortable to be doing a silly touristy thing in the occupied territories, which I hadn't realized would be the case until that morning.

All the tour outline said about the day was "Early breakfast at the hotel. Descend to the Dead Sea basin. Stop en route for a camel ride through the desert in Biblical-style. Ascend the cable car to Masada...." I didn't realize that "en route" meant, by the shortest possible route, which meant, through the West Bank. And the thing is, for an American tourist, if you didn’t know it, you wouldn’t even realize you were driving on one of the special, segregated roads available to Israelis but not to Palestinians that crisscross the West Bank.

The check-point we went through just seemed like the equivalent of a toll booth in the US from my vantage point on the bus. Similarly, with any quick glance at a map of the region, it can be hard to grok that huge portions of the tiny area of “The Holy Land” are disputed territory. Referred to as “the occupied territories” by many (though my Modern Orthodox friends called them just “the territories”), they are delineated with dotted lines for borders rather than solid ones, and on many maps of the region, the underlying color doesn’t change when you cross the dotted line, so it can be easy to miss.

There are of course lots of disputes over maps of the region. See for example this set about the shrinking of Palestinian territory over the years, and this commentary about MSNBC’s recent airing of it and subsequent apology for doing so, and an interesting counterpoint about the shrinking of Israel here. As I think I mentioned before, our tour guide Doron pointed out that there are also lots of disputes in the archaeology of the region.

Most of the disputes, I think, can be boiled down to attempts to claim “we were here first.” There are variations that have to do with “this was given to us by God” (“Dad said so!”). There are also a lot of factual disputes about “who started it.” According to some very deep-seated cultural norms, we seem to think that if we ever could agree who was here first, and / or to who started it, (or failing that, what did Dad or Mom actually say), we would have peace. I’m dubious.

My parents were singularly intolerant of sibling rivalry, in part due to my dad’s experience of his mother fighting incessantly with her sisters. When we were growing up, my memory is that if my brother and sister and I fought, our parents generally presented a united front and said, “We don’t care who started it, you’re all going to your rooms.” Now, this created a pretty deep conflict avoidance pattern for me, so I’m not necessarily recommending it, exactly. But it did put a stop to us fighting.

(I don’t believe in God, exactly, at least, not the God-the-Father imagery I was raised with, but I’m pretty sure that if there is or was an intelligent Creator, They wouldn’t have intended us to be killing each other over what They did or didn’t say. (And of course, if They were able to send us all to our rooms for fighting, They’d have to weigh in on just where those rooms were, which might solve the territorial disputes!))

Okay, so I’m digressing, and taking refuge in silliness, to avoid the very real, difficult, and painful questions. I feel, in some ways, like a struggling parent, like I am supposed to take sides; to decide who is right, and where to lend my might (not that I have that much power in the situation – but the US, as the primary source of military aide to Israel, does). Do I side with the younger/weaker child against the older one? Or, do I believe that the physically weaker one knows exactly how to get its way by pushing the older one’s buttons and manipulating onlookers into thinking they are the victim?

Of course, I am continually vastly oversimplifying the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I am still mostly overwhelmed by the barrage of facts and counter-facts, maps and counter-maps, and the true complexity of the nuanced stories and layers and layers of history. Anti-Semitism, anti-Arab racism, Imperialism, Colonialism, Capitalism, are all key factors. I’m reaching for some deep, wide, compassionate place from which to say lovingly, “it’s not about who started it, who was there first, or what you were told…” … but then I’m not sure what comes after that.

I do know that I believe that it’s important to listen to each others’ stories, and acknowledge the past and current pain and suffering. The stories of “who started it,” what it looked and felt and sounded like from each perspective, are very important to hear – not to judge who’s right or wrong, but to help both sides heal. It’s hard to do that, though, when wounds are still being inflicted on both sides, and when both sides are still to some extent pawns in the battles among more powerful global forces.

An Israeli political science professor who spoke to us on our tour gave me some new insights. I used to say, I’m not opposed to the State of Israel or to the Israeli people, just to what the government is doing to the Palestinians. However, after asking the professor about campaign finance laws in Israel, I am inclined to believe that they have a significantly more democratic system than ours, and that people largely support the policies of the government. Another member of our tour asked what, if anything, Americans could do to influence the conflict. The professor’s answer was something like, “if you want to influence Israelis in a more peaceful direction, you have to make us feel safe.” This struck a deep chord with me. Given the legacy of the Holocaust and the history of European Anti-Semitism, and the fact that many Israeli Jews see the conflict as with the whole Arab/Muslim world, or even all non-Jews, rather than as just with the Palestinian Arabs, fear is of course driving much of Israeli militancy.

But, as my Israeli-born friend Dorith pointed out, it is hard to "make" anyone feel safe. One of the most hopeful things I encountered in my travels was the work of Israeli neuroscientists and social psychologists on researching and promoting scientifically-supported social-psychological interventions into the conflict. Thanks to Don’s and my friendship with Susan and Richard Davidson, I was introduced to a colleague of Richie’s in Tel Aviv, Nava Levit-Binnun. She is working on cutting-edge neuroscience research, and on applying it to everyday society. Among other things she is leading efforts to bring mindfulness training to adults and children in Israel.

Nava also told me about the work of Eran Halperin and colleagues, who are learning how to use subtle and sophisticated methods to shift people’s attitudes in a more peaceful direction, for instance by teaching them that groups can change, encouraging emotion regulation, and loosening their “frozen” adherence to their beliefs. One of my favorites reminds me of Ai-ki-do; they called it a “paradoxical intervention campaign.” In it, they developed a video that made a fairly extreme militaristic argument about the conflict, something like “we need to continue the conflict with Palestinians in order to keep building the strongest military in the world.” Exposure to this argument caused people to question the mainstream narrative that blames Palestinians for the conflict, and shift in a more peaceful direction, including their voting behavior.

It's not a panacea, but it may be a start.