Trish Nelson

THE WITNESS
by Trish Nelson, writenels@aol.com

I can still remember the days when I thought "Thank God I don't live in a
world that would tolerate an Adolf Hitler...or that would let that much
hatred and killing to occur."

I can still remember as a small child watching the newsreel documentary at
school showing the Hiroshima bomb's explosion and naked children running
scathed and screaming through the streets. I remember feeling nauseated, but
even then, it felt other-worldly. Like watching clips of events from another
planet, things done by another species...surely it couldn't be the same human
beings with whom I live on earth now.

In my late twenties, I woke up and realized the same killing, the same
hatred, the same indifferent ignorance and arrogance are here now...in me and
others around me. You know the lyrics of the song, "Breaking up is hard to
do." Well, I found and still find that "waking up is hard to do."

I 'woke up' literally to a public radio news story of a Rwandan woman waiting
in a courtroom to testify against one of the men that had machettied her and
all of her children during the Tutsie massacres in Rwanda. She was
participating in the Truth and Reconciliation hearings and was about to see
the man who almost killed her. She had been in a home with a dozen others
and only survived by pretending to be dead , all others were dead. She
crawled over the bodies of her dead children, hours after the attackers had
left. It was 6 am in the morning in Portland, Oregon and I was in that
semi-conscious space between sleep and wakefulness. The voice from my radio
alarm narrated this woman's journey in detail and in my semi-conscious state
I imagined being her.   And in between gasps and sobs I fully woke up,
dressed myself and started my day.

I mark that day in my life as the day I woke up and became willing to see,
hear and feel the realities of the world, here and now.   I ventured out of
numbness and indifference. Before then, such stories would fade into the
background noise as I attended to the things relevant to me in my life;
mountain biking, sunsets, animals and making money.

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Almost immediately, as I became willing to experience our world in a larger
way, opportunities presented themselves. I started writing a book about
compassion, a compilation of stories about different 'living lights.'
Individual people willing to feel, to love, to open their hearts to difficult
things and pour out the healing balm of compassion from within.

It was during this endeavor that I was whisked away to Israel in November
1999 with Leah Green, the founder of MidEast Citizen Diplomacy for a
'Compassionate Listening Delegation.' I was completely ignorant of almost
everything pertaining to Israel.   All I knew was there were a lot of "holy
tours" that came to see different religious sites. I was there because Leah
was recommended as one to interview, she being a peace maker and bridge
builder herself. Moreover, she had promised me there would be others on the
trip that would fit into my book.

A mere year later and I am finally opening my mouth about my experiences with
the courage and conviction to speak up. Particularly now, I want to share
my experience with others willing to see, to hear, to know and to care.
Every little bit of light shining makes a difference.

The first thing I noticed before even landing in Israel in November 1999 was
that it was an anomaly to not have an opinion, a position or an agenda about
the Israeli-Palestinian situation. But certainly, my great ignorance about
anything happening in Israel entitled me to this neutrality. I was there,
after all, to listen and learn from many people's perspectives after which
perhaps I would have an opinion.

"Are you with 'Peace Now'?, " the Israeli woman sitting next to me on the
plane asked suspiciously after pleasantries turned to why I'd come to Israel.
I had just told her about the Compassionate Listening Delegation. I
answered, "No," and wondered why an organization called 'Peace Now' should
arouse such disdain from this woman. "So you are here to go listen to
people? Plenty of people will tell you what they think. So what?," she said
tersely. I had been wondering the same thing myself...what is the point? If
I wasn't there for book interviews as well..."Lots of people will say what they

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think but how many people are actually listened to?," I found myself saying
in response.

My fellow passenger was coming back from a fund raising business trip in the
U.S. She worked at immigration somewhere for someone but I didn't catch the
details. She said with a smile that she lived in the 'wild frontier', like
the wild west in the early American days. "In the U.S., Americans are just
concerned with what to eat for dinner and what is on television. Life is
quite boring." Not like in the wild west where she raised money from
Americans to help expand Jewish immigration to Israel.

At the time, I had no idea what she was talking about and I had no idea where
she actually lived. All I knew was that she didn't seem to like me. "If you
are so concerned for Peace, why don't you work for it in your own country?,"
she asked. Another good question. Again, I had been asking myself the same
thing. Israel was not even on my list of top fifty places I wanted to visit.
The truth was that I was drawn to Israel while working on my book about
compassion and I myself still did not understand why. That, however, was far
too honest and vulnerable a thing to say to my twelve-hour flight neighbor.
Instead, I contrived a defensive answer to justify my visit to her homeland.
By the time we landed at Ben Gurion airport, our interaction had dissolved
into a mutually appreciated silence. An awkward and artificial 'have a nice
stay,' or the like was muttered as we disembarked. I did not understand why
my lack of political position had evoked such disapproval and distrust. But
my confusion was only to increase as time passed. Welcome to the Holy Land.

The first day of our meetings, we listened to Israeli Jewish interviewees and
to two Palestinian men share their life experience. The Palestinians were
currently part of the Palestinian Authority; at the time, I did not know what
that was. The level of my ignorance was so complete that I was like a small
child...without information but also without contamination. Whether
listening to an Israeli Jew or listening to a Palestinian, it was all
listening to another human. I was not Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Arab or
informed; I now see that as a big blessing in disguise. Embarrassing
perhaps, but a big gift over all.
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Salim was six feet tall with dark hair and dark eyes. He was perhaps thirty.
His shoulders slumped forward slightly and he often looked at the floor as
he spoke in Arabic softly but passionately. His colleague translated. "We
are not animals. We are human beings like you" the translator said.

"When I was fifteen I was arrested during the Intifada. There was no trial.
I was put in prison. I was kept there for five years. We were treated like
animals. Tortured. Fed horrible food." He paused and then continued,
"There is blood on both sides." He rambled off a list of atrocities one
after the other with dates and deaths. One by the Palestinians and another
by Israeli Jews, another by Israeli Jews then Palestinians and on and on.
"There is blood on their hands and there is blood on our hands. What is
important now is to create a just and lasting peace."

This was day one and my heart and my eyes welled with tears as I imagined
being imprisoned for five years from age fifteen to twenty. I sat with Salim
alone after the group left and all I could do was cry. It was not just his
sadness or resignation that I felt. The heaviness was in the very air I
breathed. It seemed I was breathing unshed tears of thousands. He brushed
my cheek and told me not to cry. "My mother cried like this every
night...please don't cry."

I had one puzzle piece after day one. But, like a small child, I thought
that one piece was the whole picture. I did not know at the time that it was
just one piece of a much larger picture. But also like a small child with
open eyes and ears, I continued to see and hear more that just made things so
unclear. I had thought that first day, that I knew who had the black hat and
who had the white hat. My friend Salim had the white hat. And for one who
craves clarity about who and what is right versus wrong that is an important
thing to know.

But then our group went to Gaza and listened to Dr. Eyad Saraj. He is the
founder of the one and only mental health facility in the Gaza Strip. He is
a Palestinian psychiatrist who worked with Israeli Jewish physicians who
helped him to get the equipment he needed to get his hospital started. He is
also the founder of Physicians

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for Human Rights. He had written and published articles openly criticizing the
Palestinian Authority officials for their human rights violations. He,
himself, had been imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority officials on
numerous occasions.

"I remember being in my cell one time and hearing the Palestinian Authority
officer interrogating a fellow Palestinian prisoner next to my cell. He was
not getting any answer so he kept yelling louder and louder. Finally, the
officer flew into a rage and started screaming in Hebrew at the prisoner."
Not only did the white hat fall off the Palestinian Authority head as I
listened intently to Dr. Saraj, but the complexity of the messy situation
became apparent.

The unhealed wounds started to emerge, demanding recognition. The cycle of
violence became evident as a "cycle" where the perpetrator perhaps could be
recognized as much as a victim as the 'victim.' Most Palestinian men I heard
speak who were in their mid twenties to thirties had been jailed and beaten
as boys by Israeli soldiers. Those boys had grown up and now some were in
the Palestinian Authority 'security forces.' The Israeli 'defense forces',
those soldiers or officers who had imprisoned these boys during the Intifada
of the eighties were themselves children of victims who had survived
Auschwitz or who had themselves experienced similar torture and humiliation.

The white hat department abruptly and permanently shut down. There were no
'white hats.' All there were now were different hats. Much to my own
distress, pure right and wrong became less and less relevant as understanding
emerged as the one and only healing factor. The only line that could connect
the dots now was a line of blood and pain that my heart could actually
understand. And slowly understanding became more important than condoning or
condemning. I began to understand why, even if I did not approve of how,
people acted out from their pain and hopelessness.

My room-mate on this "Compassionate Listening Delegation" was a German woman,
Inga an American citizen, with a heavy burden of guilt over what the German
people had inflicted upon the Jewish people in WWII. She had a rage and
condemnation of her parents for not doing anything to stop the Nazi regime.
I will never forget our

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visit to an Israeli Jewish settlement in the West Bank where we had dinner
with Jewish families living in the sliver of land deemed as the 'Palestinian territory.'

It was here that an older woman shared her experience of traveling from
Poland to what she thought was a work camp as a fifteen year old girl. She
described disembarking from the train with the hopes this would be better
than in Poland where people were starving. She was in a different "worker"
line than her parents and truly had no idea what was really going on in this
'work camp.' That evening she asked the whereabouts of her family. People
pointed to the smoke stacks billowing up smoke and said, 'They're gone.'
Even hearing her words, I knew I could not digest or comprehend the level of
betrayal or loss that must have occurred for her in that instant. Yet, she
had an almost surreal sense of peace about her.

My room-mate mustered the courage to acknowledge being German to her. She
apologized for what her countrymen had done and ventured to ask for
forgiveness.
"I cannot forgive you," she said flatly. "I simply cannot." Her honesty was
raw, just like the unhealed wound was raw that played it's dance across other
people's suffering. This woman went on to ask us what business do we have in
Israel after what we have done to the Native Americans of North America. As
if one injustice condemns one from seeking any future justice.

Later that evening we had all gone to different families within the
settlement to share dinner. Leah Green, the founder of Mideast Citizen
Diplomacy and herself Jewish, had stayed to have dinner with this family.
The day after that dinner was the most distraught I'd seen Leah. Eyes puffy
and red she seemed temporarily defeated.

This survivor and settlement matriarch had said to Leah, "You are not doing
the Jewish people any good here. You should go home now." Somehow this
woman's own suffering had blinded her to any other person's suffering. She
told Leah taking the delegation (us) to listen to what the Palestinians had
to say was a disservice to the Jewish people. Any challenge to her viewpoint
was rebuffed with a quiet but implacable rage. Leah was treated as a
traitor, an infidel to the Jewish people.

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The various people we listened to provided us with insight but so too did the
visible facts. Facts like the cattle chute that Palestinians must pass
through from Gaza to reach Israel proper from their 'territories'. The
cattle chute has an eerie quality to it. It is made of metal bars and grids
and forms a narrow passage way for Palestinians to pass. This is another
'safety measure' by the Israeli government. It started filling up with wall
to wall people in the wee hours of the morning as people tried to get to
work. The military check points where soldiers inspected passes and
completely controlled the Palestinians' ability to travel also told a story.

The 'refugee camps' established after the 1948 war were now ghetto slums.
There was not one tree in sight in these areas much less a park for children
to play in. I had thought of 'refugee camps' as tents where refugees lived
temporarily but these were cement cities; ghettos. This was no longer
temporary housing but permanent dwellings where families lived. Many of the
elders in these families often still had the keys to the home they had lived
in before being forced to flee in 1948.

People living in these Refugee camps, like Muhammad who lived in al Fawwar
Refugee camp and worked for the United Nations Relief Association, were not
only disillusioned with the Israeli occupation and it's impact upon
Palestinian daily life, but he was also frustrated with the Palestinian
Authority 'leadership'. "In the Intifada in the eighties, people were
willing to give up everything for the cause of freedom. People were out in
the streets demonstrating instead of going to school, they were arrested and
imprisoned for years and were willing to make the sacrifice. Now people are
bitter and disappointed. They ask, 'This is what we sacrificed for? Our
lives are worse now.' There is a new elite in the Palestinian Authority. A
new 'V.I.P.' class that doesn't care about the people. We don't need any
more war-hero leaders we need everyone to lead." I listened to layers of
frustration from people of both cultures not only with 'the other side', but
also with their own leadership and policies.

Listening to those who had grown up in refugee camps and learning far more
than the vast majority know about Israeli law concerning Palestinians caused
me to see 'a-new' our own laws and actions towards Native Americans and black
Americans.

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Jewish citizens like Israeli Human Rights lawyer Lea Tsemel informed us of
what most Americans and likely most Israelis don't know about Israeli law
towards Palestinians. Jeff Halper, the coordinator of Israelis Against House
Demolitions was also an Israeli Jewish voice informing us of the twenty to
thirty Palestinian homes demolished by bulldozers per week within the West
Bank when he founded his organization in 1997; demolitions that continue to
this day. We also sat with Palestinian families whose home had been
demolished multiple times.

It was on this trip to Israel where my perception of the word "terrorist"
forever and indelibly changed. I can remember hearing of bus bombings and
the like and thinking how tragic! One must be insane to inflict such random
violence. I don't think that any more. Yes it is tragic, but it does not
require some-one insane to cause such pain. Hopeless, desperate, angry, hurt
and perhaps him or herself already feeling dead...it could very easily be a
sane person in insane circumstances.

Now, I've met people who were incarcerated at the age of twelve without a
trial. I've heard young men who were beaten nearly to death as unarmed boys
not yet in their teens. Now that I see it is legal in Israel to deny a
family a building permit no matter how many times they apply for one to build
a home on what is legally their own land because they are not Jewish. And to
see a family forced to build without a permit because they needed a home to
live in only to have it razed at three in the morning by bulldozers of the
Israeli government. To have their children hysterically driven out of their
home in the middle of the night only to be greeted by a hundred armed Israeli
soldiers encircling them. This is not terrorism because it is currently
'legal' by Israeli law and does not make it to mainstream media as does the
random bombing.

Just as Americans subjugated blacks to inhumane but legal bigotry so too is
it occurring in Israel and has been to the Palestinians for decades. I do
not condone violence of any kind. But even more dangerous than the obvious
violence of a bus bomb that offends our senses and where people instantly
shake their heads and think, "I could never do such a thing," is the less
obvious violence of unchallenged legal

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degradation and inhumanity that goes unrecognized because it is not targeted
at your own community. In the end, it will be targeted back at your own
community because hatred breeds hatred, violence breeds more violence and if
laws are unjust and inhumane they in themselves breed suffering and more
blood.

A year ago I had the gift of sitting with people and hearing their life
stories. I sat with people who more likely than not would never want to sit
with each other. I experienced my own anger, sorrow and hopelessness. The
pain and the human suffering is occurring in everyone, every where. I had
the gift of innocent ignorance which is quantum miles from righteous and
vested indignant ignorance. It allowed me to hear what I did not want to hear,
it allowed me to see what I did not want to see.

I see what is happening in Israel and Palestine is happening in this country
and probably to some extent everywhere in the world. I see as an American,
who's country supplies the Israeli government with more money than any other
country in the world and vast military equipment a new urgency for my own
awareness and responsibility to be awake to what is happening.

Now the violence that has been submerged from the public purview, but has
none the less existed is becoming visibly manifest. With over three hundred
Palestinian deaths and nearly fifty Israeli Jewish deaths, with almost ten
thousand Palestinian injuries and with countless acres of bulldozed
agricultural Palestinian land you don't hear about...with armed tanks and
soldiers facing and shooting at children with sling shots, we must now ask
ourselves in this country...How anesthetized are we?

Gandhi did not free India alone. People worldwide saw the struggle for
freedom and for basic human rights in a legal paradigm designed to suppress
and rule. Martin Luther King did not alter the unjust legal structure of a
white American power center alone. "The Witness"...you and I, dictate how
history unfolds just as much as the civil rights leader, martyrs and
oppressors do.

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If we saw black non violent protesters hosed down with full force fire hoses
by our military or our police chiefs today what would we do? If we see
twelve year old children armed with slingshots, rocks or completely unarmed
being gunned down and killed in the Palestinian territories daily, what do we
feel? What do we think? What do we do?

One possible thing to do is to ask ourselves why? And as uncomfortable or
inconvenient as it may be to search out why? If we did that and we looked
beyond the headlines of 'clashes' we will find unhonored commitments to the
Palestinian people that go back to the U.S. supported United Nations Security
Council Resolution 242
which called for the "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the territories
occupied in the recent (1967) conflict," which is exactly where the clashes
and daily Palestinian deaths occur. "The right of every state in the area to
live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or
acts of force" also was promised in this resolution. This also has been
denied for decades now.

Israeli settlements in occupied territories are a direct violation of this
agreement and they make territorial integrity for the Palestinians completely
impossible. Since that agreement, the settlements have done nothing but
expand at an accelerated rate. With the settlements, come the Israeli
soldiers to protect the Jewish Israeli settlers...by the thousands in the
'Palestinian territories.' During unrest it is the Palestinians that are
placed under curfew which is equivalent to house arrest by the Israeli
military not the settlers in the territories. Palestinians have been shot
and killed for breaking 'curfew.'

Tanks and guns can not make the Israeli Jews safe just like Molotov cocktails
and stones cannot make the Palestinians safe. In the midst of current mayhem
the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi words, 'an eye for an eye will just have the
whole world go blind' echoes out across the Middle East. Safety and a right to
a decent life is what both sides crave. Yet only in acknowledging "the
other" as human, not a monster or an animal does peaceful co-existence have a
chance. Certainly there will be those within both cultures that may chose
hatred and enmity just as there are those still today in the
United States that chose hatred and enmity. But to tolerate and ignore laws
and systems of governance that breed such thinking is our own global undoing.
The world is too small and the United States is too big to turn a blind eye
to such continuous human rights violations particularly if we are to play a
role as 'peace broker.'

Martin Luther King once said, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere." He was not popular for saying it as he was speaking against our
participation in the Vietnam war. Justice and popularity don't always go
hand in hand for we all have been programmed to believe certain things. It
is time to step out of our own American cultural programming that is often
unrecognized that Arabs and Muslims are dangerous terrorists and the Israeli
government, as our ally, is a benign neighbor to the Palestinian people.
Israeli presence in Palestinian territories is indeed occupation by one of
the world's strongest military forces and that occupation is supplemented by
discriminatory laws to dominate and demean Palestinian-Israeli citizens.
Gandhi said to the British, "for some reason you must humiliate us to control
us." He also said, "the world is full of people who despise what is going on
here and we need their strength."

Unfortunately, the Palestinian people have not chosen a strictly non-violent
path of resistance to occupation and they are not led by a voice like Gandhi.
Orchestrated demonstrations like the one called 'Day of Rage,' where
Palestinians both unarmed and armed...however out-armed they be by the
Israeli military, march in the streets of their own territories and provide
news stories of 'clashes' rather than murder as it may be reported if every
Palestinian had no weapon, not even a rock. Violence on both sides makes it
easier to miss seeing the de-humanizing Israeli laws and practices that are
and have been in existence for decades.

One year after returning from my jolting journey to Israel and several months
after the blood spilling, my own heart finally has the strength to speak. In
between tears and feeling so small I could never help the desperate need for
healing and justice, I heard my own heart say..."Light a candle and let one
heart's truth ignite another. There will be others willing to hear, willing
to see, willing to feel another's pain. The heart flame in you will also
unite and ignite others in a luminous glow. And everywhere any one is
willing to shine their own heart's awareness, caring and compassion, the
darkness flees as ignorance disintegrates into oblivion."