I received an email this morning from my comrades in the Brown Berets in Boise, Idaho. Boise is the city where I lived for five years when I was a professor at Boise State University. These friends, some of whom are affiliated with Boise State University’s (Multiethnic: it used to be “Multiethnic,” the university deleted this phrase so as not to offend the white folks on campus) Cultural Center. For the last few years the Center has put on what is called “The Tunnel of Oppression.” In brief, the Tunnel is a theatrical experience that sets up different scenarios dealing with racism and oppression and puts the viewer in the position of experiencing expression, if only for a few fleeting moments. I helped with last year’s Tunnel on a couple of scenarios: one dealing with refugees in a global context, including Palestinian refugees; the second dealing with racial profiling in American airports. There were other scenarios last year including one on ICE raids targeting Mexican Americans, one on rape, and one on the Zapatistas.
Apparently, this year they are making one scenario about Israeli checkpoints in Palestine. A student wrote in and complained about it. I quote her letter below in its entirety. Following the letter will be my reply, one that first outlines problems in this letter, and then explains exactly what checkpoints are, how they affect Palestinian lives, and why it is not one-sided. Here is the letter:
I am a senior at Boise State majoring in Business. I am writing this letter as a response to the proposed theme of this year’s “Tunnel of Oppression” that is put on yearly at BSU by your students. I am an Observant Jew and not only a supporter of the State of Israel but also of the proposed Palestinian State. The Palestinian people have lived in the land of Israel for a very long time and deserve a sovereign nation of their own. I have studied both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian situation and feel that I can write this letter in complete confidence of my knowledge.
A reliable source contacted me and forwarded me both the Youtube video entitled “Pregnant Palestinian Stopped at an Israeli Checkpoint!” which was apparently shown to the students in your class, and the proposed outline for the ‘Checkpoint’ scene in your tunnel. After reading the proposed idea and viewing the Youtube clip, I felt alarmed at the blatant one-sidedness and appalling misinformation that is portrayed by your project. You are portraying an Israel that only exists in western (and eastern – the blood libel has reappeared recently in Arab newspapers) media, the great “Zionist oppressor” that only the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talk about. (I have personal friends that are Israeli and have served with pride in the Israel Defense Forces and they would be the first to tell you that none of it is true. I have personal friends that have lived in and visit Israel regularly and who are equally comfortable around Israelis and Palestinians.)
You are forgetting the other side of the story. Why don’t you tell your students to imagine Idaho being hit by several thousand rockets fired by a fringe-group of extremists from Canada? Why don’t you tell them the truth, which is that the checkpoints exist only because they must? There is a reason that every mall, Synagogue, school, and Mosque requires armed guards; it’s not because Israelis like being searched at every destination, it is due to the very real, everyday threat of terrorist attacks funded and supported by Islamist fanaticism. Why don’t you tell your students to imagine being killed by a suicide bomber during Christmas dinner at a local hotel? You’re forgetting that part. You also fail to mention that the Palestinians are regularly cared for at Israeli hospitals by staffs that comprise of both Jews and Muslims that work together seamlessly on a daily basis, treating peoples of all races, religions, creeds, and political affiliations. But I don’t need to mention any more because there is no truth to the portrayal of Israel and Israelis suggested for this farce.
This presentation is not only one-sided but also blatantly anti-Semitic. The representation of American Christians as being duped by a hidden cabal of Shylock-esque Israelis is clear. The Muslims are clearly supposed to be the helpless victims in this caricature, the Christians clueless but well-meaning, and the Jews are left to be characterized as bloodthirsty thugs “aroused by the sudden chaos” into beating civilians at random. I believe any Jew would be offended by this.
I have already made Boise’s small but very close-knit Jewish community aware of this atrocity along with the Idaho Statesman and the Arbiter. If you decide to allow this presentation to continue as it is written, I will contact the Anti-Defamation League and the ACLU for blatant Anti-Semitism on a college campus. I am in the process of forming a group of Israelis, American Jews, and fellow supporters of Israel of all faiths to protest your Tunnel of Oppression and hand out fliers from standwithus.org that show in plain fact, the truth in the Holy Land.
Dear Comrades,
The first claim this student makes is that Palestinians have lived “on the land of Israel” for a “very long time.” Actually, Palestinians have always lived in Palestine NOT Israel; Israel did not exist before 1948. These Palestinians have been and are Muslims, Christians, and Jews. In fact, the city of Nablus, where I now live, is home to a community of Jews called Samaritans. These Jews identify as Palestinian Jews and when the state of Israel was created, they refused to move to the other side of the Green Line (the 1949 Armistice Line also known as the pre-1967 border). The Jewish Zionists who came to Palestine, starting in the late 19th century to colonize the land were European, also known as Ashkenazi Jews. They use the language of “return” to suggest that they were originally from here. But Israeli historian Shlomo Sand makes it clear that this is a myth; these Jews who colonized Palestine and ethnically cleansed the land of 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 were Jews who converted to Judaism in Russia and Europe.
Second, the student argues that the Tunnel is only presenting one side of the story. I think what s/he really means is not that it’s one-sided, but rather that it is not the side that s/he wishes to have at the forefront. The fact of the matter is: if you live in the U.S. and you breathe you get the other side of the the story on a daily basis. If you watch the presidential and vice presidential debates you not only hear the word Israel numerous times, you also hear the candidates’ profession of love for Israel. In contradistinction, the word Palestine or Palestinian is never mentioned. That, my dear comrades, is one sided. The reason that some of us who do work in the U.S. trying to educate people about Palestine do not tell the so-called other side of the story is that we are working to bring to bear a side that is not represented, that is vigorously silenced. The only way one can understand the issue of sides is to think about the fact that the two sides are of colonizer and colonized. Of occupier and occupied. Imagine, for instant, that we wanted to present a narrative of slavery in the U.S. Would we (meaning those who oppose human rights violations, oppression) tell that story from the point of view of the slave owner? Or what if we wanted to tell a story about what happened in to gay people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, handicapped people, and Jews in Nazi Germany–would we tell that story through the eyes of Adolf Hitler? Or if we wanted to talk about violence against Mexicans crossing the U.S. border would we use Chris Simcox of the Minute Men to tell that story? Or if we wanted to narrate a piece about the Native American genocide would we rely upon the words of those who conquered and colonized the Americas? I think you get my point.
The analogy s/he tries to draw with a made-up scenario of Canadians firing rockets into the U.S. doesn’t quite work. One would have to tweak the scenario a bit. It would work as an analogy if about 60 years before the rockets started firing Americans had invaded, stolen and conquered Canada. If Americans massacred thousands of Canadians. If Americans made 750,000 Canadians refugees for 60 years. If throughout that time Americans stole Canadian homes, water, agricultural lands, murdered innocent civilians on a daily basis, built a 20 foot high concrete wall to confiscate more land and water and displace more people. If Americans set up a system of controlling Canadians through over 650 checkpoints on a daily basis. If Americans invaded Canadian homes, villages, and refugee camps every day, killing civilians and kidnapping them to warehouse 11,000 Canadians in American jails. If all of these things–and so much more–were true, then we would understand, I think, why Canadians would be firing rockets on to American soil. They would be using armed resistance and they would be legally allowed to do so under international law. (Oh, and by the way, there are no rockets being fired by Palestinians in the West Bank, where all 650 checkpoints are into Israel.) Moreover, armed resistance in Palestine has only in recent years had become Islamic. Over the course of Palestinian resistance for the last few decades it has been predominantly secular, and oftentimes Communist. The rise of Hamas after the first intifada had a lot to do with the state of Israel itself bolstering Hamas as a way to weaken the then-stronger Fatah movement. This should come as no surprise as colonial regimes have always relied upon the tactic of divide and rule. The latest phase of this meddling in Hamas-Fatah politics, including U.S. involvement, was revealed in an article in Vanity Fair last year.
A third point the student brings up is about Antisemitism. S/he compares creating a scene about Israeli checkpoints in Palestine to blood libel. First, blood libel is certainly anti-Semitic; it involves a mythology about Jews using the blood of children for their matzah during their holiday Passover. The mythology is just that. Anti-Semitism actually refers to prejudice directed at any of the three peoples who speak or spoke one of the three Semitic languages: Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic. But over the course of the last century–and more specifically, since World War II–Jews have worked to dislodge the original meaning of the word to only mean anti-Jewish. But even if we take this Zionist definition of the word at face value, through this student’s logic being anti-Jewish is the same as being anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist. These are three distinct categories. I think the first is self explanatory. The second, being anti-Israel, means critiquing the state of Israel and its policies. It is no different than critiquing the U.S. for its policies. But because the state of Israel is a Jewish state by definition (legally speaking there is no Israeli nationality; on Israeli Jews’ identity cards it reads “Jewish” and some Israelis have tried to change this in court without success) some people choose to conflate the two. Importantly, there are many Palestinians who also live inside what is now Israel, all of whom are subjected to a set of laws that resemble Jim Crow segregation in the U.S. One must be Jewish to have equal rights in the state of Israel. The third term, Zionism, is an ideology. People who believe in Zionism believe that Jews have a right to conquer and settle a land even though that land, Palestine, belongs to an indigenous population, the Palestinians. This ideology began as a secular one, though there are of course religious Zionists today, many living in illegal settlements in the West Bank. One of the primary tactics used to silence people who wish to speak about the reality here in Palestine is to call them anti-Semitic in order to get them to shut up. It is worth noting that this tactic is especially used by the Israel lobby (organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC] as well as the Anti-Defamation League [ADL] this student refers to in her/his letter) to force politicians to submit to unconditional support of Israel. Barack Obama is a perfect example of this as before he ran for office he had strong personal and political relationships with Palestinian Americans in Illinois. In any case, those of us who are committed to justice and human rights for Palestinians and all oppressed people around the world, the issue is not bashing a state. Rather, it is asking that state to comply with international law and uphold human rights; when a state violates these codes it deserves to be critiqued and challenged at the very least. The organizations this student is working with in the threats directed at you are Zionist organizations of the worst order. The ADL and Stand With Us disguise work that they do as upholding human rights. In fact, these organizations are stealth. In Congress and on American university campuses alike they work on a number of levels to ensure that nothing negative is ever said about the state of Israel. They work to silence student activism on the subject and by equal measure they work to fire or make sure faculty are not tenured if they conduct research on Palestine or are critical of Israel. Just following the ADL’s campaign against Jimmy Carter for writing Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid, which was in many ways very tame and did not go far enough to explain the horrors that Israel unleashes on Palestinians every day and you may get a sense of what I mean. These organizations try to work with people of color in the U.S. united under some kind of “we’re all oppressed” banner; but the reality is that most Jews in the U.S. are white folks like me. They have white privilege and use it to their advantage. I’ll give you an example. The “Tunnel of Oppression” originated at the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. I went there a few years ago thinking that it would be a museum highlighting the oppression of all peoples. I was horrified to see that in fact 90% of it was about a history of anti-Jewish persecution and the remaining 10% about African Americans and Native Americans; this is especially appalling when you measure the number of indigenous people who suffered genocide under the hands of brutal European colonialism. No other genocide in history can quite match this. For me what this is all about is a kind of Jewish supremacy (I use this term with a nod to white supremacy). What I mean by this is that such organizations like the ADL which feign interest in the suffering of other people always do so with an eye towards making sure that no one ever compares their suffering to what happened to Jews during World War II. Take a look, too, at the Washington DC Holocaust Museum. They have a genocide watch page which tracks more recent genocide around the world. But they are very clear that the world holocaust can never be used again to describe the suffering of any other people. And it is worth asking the question: why is it that we have a museum about something that happened in Europe in Washington DC? This museum was erected before the Native American museum was built and we still have no such museum about slavery or the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. But you don’t have to go that far to see how this works. The Idaho Human Rights Education Center chose to build an Anne Frank memorial. Why is that exactly? The land on which Boise as a city, or the monument more specifically, is land that once belonged to tribes who were forcibly removed, ethnically cleansed, massacred, and who now live on reservations in Idaho. Why is it that we are not looking at those human rights violations? And on the adjacent memorial wall, why are there no quotes by any Arabs or Muslims?
So the checkpoints. From the letter I gather that you all chose to do a scene this year about the checkpoints here in Palestine. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) released a report this week updating the number of checkpoints in the West Bank. As of this week there are 630 such military checkpoints. These checkpoints take various forms. One is a permanent structure that is like a land border crossing as if you are crossing an international border. Right now, as far as I know, these only exist if you are going to Jerusalem, but Jerusalem is part of Palestine (however the Annexation Wall has annexed Jerusalem in such a way that if you want to go there you must cross through one of these checkpoints. If you are on foot, you walk through a maze of steel turnstiles, each one locking you inside the next space (there are several such spaces you must walk through in order to pass). The first one checks your ID card (Palestinians have several kinds of IDs: 1) if you live in 1948 or what is now known as Israel; 2) if you live in Jerusalem; 3) if you live in the West Bank; 4) if you live in Gaza. Depending on your ID you may or may not be allowed to cross. And even if you have proper papers, you still may not be allowed to pass (sometimes even if you have legitimate papers from an embassy or from a hospital in Israel the soldiers will most often turn you away). After the double ID check you are locked into an area where it resembles an airport as you are required to walk through a metal detector and then put your bag on a metal detection machine. Only here in some of these checkpoints there are armed soldiers pointing guns at you from planks above as you do this. Then there is yet another hoop at the end where you must put your hand on a computer-generated hand print machine before you may pass. And even then, you still may not be able to pass. Everything is at the whim of the soldiers. There are not any laws here; even Israeli laws do not apply to the West Bank. The law is basically the whim of a soldier on a particular day.
A couple of examples. A few years ago I was taking a friend to the American consulate in Jerusalem because she was going to study in the U.S. We had all the proper papers and an appointment at the consulate. She was 19 years old at the time. We went to the checkpoint, but they refused to let us go through to Jerusalem from Bethlehem. Another example, from a couple of years ago: I was with a couple of girlfriends in a rented car driving from Ramallah to Bethlehem. We drove through a checkpoint, known as the Container Checkpoint, which is in a neighborhood of Jerusalem called Abu Dies. We were told we could not pass because I there was a foreigner in the car with Palestinians. On that night–it was around 9 PM–we were told that it’s illegal for foreigners and Palestinians to be in the same car. Another example: a few weeks ago a student invited me home for iftar (breaking the fast during Ramadan). The checkpoint near Nablus (the city I live in) is called Huwarra. By all accounts it is the worst (meaning the soldiers are the most lethal and violent with the people and are least likely to allow you to pass in either direction) checkpoint in the West Bank. This checkpoint is outdoors like the old ones used to be when you would go to Jerusalem. You just stand in line and wait for hours, especially if you are a Palestinian man, and this waiting is entirely a form of harassment. Most of the time we stand and watch the soldiers laughing, talking on the phone, eating, hanging out, even playing cards, rather than allow us to cross. This checkpoint, by the way, is deep inside the West Bank. It is nowhere near the Green Line or the Israeli-imposed border. Crossing Huwarra means crossing from one Palestinian area to another–which is the case for at least 80% of these checkpoints. On this day the soldiers were standing on the railing above us, threatening to shoot us. One of the women in line asked me to go speak to the soldier. I did, though I lost my cool, and called him a name he didn’t like. He told me that my choices were either to go to prison or home.
There is another kinds of checkpoint, too. This is called a “flying checkpoint.” These are checkpoints that move from place to place every day and you never know where they will be. They are always in a different location. If you would like to have more of a context for checkpoints in general, there are reports on the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem’s website.
Why do the checkpoints exist? The student who wrote to you would have it that they exist for “security” reasons. But for whose security? United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, written at the end of the 1967 war in which Israel conquered and annexed Gaza and the West Bank, it was made clear that:
Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,
UN Resolution 242 has been the main document used in all negotiations between the state of Israel and Palestinians. However, since 1967 the state of Israel has been in direct violation of this UN Resolution, as well as a host of others (most importantly UN Resolution 194, which states that Palestinian refugees have a right to return to their homes, and which UN Resolution 242 upholds later in the document). One of the ways it has violated this resolution is by building illegal settlements. These settlements, or colonies, are illegal because they violate UN Resolution 242. It is also illegal because it violates the Fourth Geneva Convention which states:
The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
The real reason for these checkpoints, which also prevent Palestinians from driving on Jewish-only roads, is to protect their illegal settlements. These settlements help to create facts on the ground; what this means is by continuing to build them and offer tremendous savings to Israelis who wish to live there (most who live in them do so because they can purchase houses for half the price of those inside the Green Line; the other population living in these settlements are religious Zionists who believe that it is their God-given right to occupy and control all of historic Palestine by force). There are also what is known as illegal “outposts” which are basically a group of mobile home units. Israelis come into the West Bank, plop them down, and presto, you have the beginning of an illegal settlement in the making. To give you a sense of what these facts on the ground mean in terms of checkpoints and the related military infrastructure here is a description of what Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions calls the “Matrix of Control”:
A second set of controls derives from Israel’s policy of “creating facts on the ground” – virtually all of them in violation of international law (including the Fourth Geneva Convention signed by Israel itself). These include:
* Massive expropriation of Palestinian land;
* Construction of more than 200 settlements and the transfer of 400,000 Israelis across the 1967 boundaries: about 200,000 in the West Bank, 200,000 in East Jerusalem and 6000 in Gaza (the latter occupying a fourth of the land, including most of the coastline);
* Carving the Occupied Territories into areas — Areas “A,” “B,” “C,” “D” in the West Bank; “H-1” and “H-2” in Hebron; Yellow, Green, Blue and White Areas in Gaza; nature reserves; closed military areas, security zones, and “open green spaces” of restricted housing over more than half of Palestinian East Jerusalem – which confine the Palestinians to some 190 islands all surrounded by Israeli settlements, roads and checkpoints;
* Carving the Occupied Territories into areas — Areas “A,” “B,” “C,” “D” in the West Bank; “H-1” and “H-2” in Hebron; Yellow, Green, Blue and White Areas in Gaza; nature reserves; closed military areas, security zones, and “open green spaces” of restricted housing over more than half of Palestinian East Jerusalem – which confine the Palestinians to some 190 islands all surrounded by Israeli settlements, roads and checkpoints;
* A massive system of highways and by-pass roads designed to link settlements, to create barriers between Palestinian areas and to incorporate the West Bank into Israel proper;
* Imposing severe controls on Palestinian movement;
* Construction of seven industrial parks that give new life to isolated settlements, exploit cheap Palestinian labor while denying it access to Israel, rob Palestinian cities of their economic vitality, control key locations and ensure Israel’s ability to continue dumping its industrial wastes onto the West Bank;
* Maintaining control over aquifers and other vital natural resources;
* Exploiting holy places (Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and others in and around Jerusalem) as pretexts for maintaining a “security presence,” and hence military control.
This carving up of the Palestinian landscape is done with the Jewish-only roads, the illegal settlements, and, of course, the checkpoints. You can’t isolate one from the other. For instance, because it is a Jewish holiday right now we are under what is called “closure.” This means everyone who lives in the West Bank is sealed up and everyone basically becomes a prisoner of their own village or city.
You asked me if these soldiers are armed and if they wear uniforms. The answer is yes to both of these questions. And their weapons are often pointed at you when you are in the checkpoint. There are certainly Israeli soldiers (who I prefer to call Israeli terrorists because they literally terrorize people who live here every day) who invade Palestinian villages and refugee camps in plain clothes, but as far as I know they are not at checkpoints. The checkpoints also serve as a base of operations for nightly invasions into each city, village, and refugee camp. Where I live, in Nablus, they come into the area almost every night and kidnap Palestinians and take them to jail or murder them (there are currently around 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners). Huwarra checkpoint by my house also contains a prison across a parking lot and an Israeli military base. I’m sure that it is difficult to imagine what this all looks like from Boise, Idaho so I’m going to end with photographs that give you a sense of the images to accompany my words. I will begin with a map of the West Bank Apartheid Wall (above); on it you will see the path of the wall is confiscating a tremendous amount of Palestinian land in order to include the illegal settlements within what Israel hopes will be its permanent borders (most of Palestinians’ water sources are included in this confiscated land too). Also notice the blue triangles, which denote illegal Israeli settlements. The second map (below) shows you most of the checkpoints inside the West Bank. Following the map are a series of captioned photographs that I took at various checkpoints over the past three years in Palestine. And one note on the Apartheid Wall, which will be of interested to the Brown Berets: Al Jazeera aired a documentary, which you can watch on their website or on Youtube, called “Walls of Shame.” It looked at four walls around the world and it included one on Palestine and one on the U.S. Mexico border. Incidentally, Bet El, an Israeli company, has been contracted to help build the wall along the U.S. Mexico border (Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine talks about this and gives specifics).
There is violence that targets Palestinians every day. Some of it comes from these illegal Israeli settlers that the Israeli army is here to protect. Some of it comes from the army itself. Here are some recent links about the checkpoints and also about its context.
The Israeli army forces Palestinian men to remove their cloths at a checkpoint near Jenin city
Palestinian toddler almost dies due to Israeli checkpoint
World Bank: Israeli siege is strangling Palestinian economy
Three Palestinian residents wounded by Israeli army fire at a Nablus checkpoint
UN facing increased delays at Israeli checkpoints
Settlers increase attacks on Palestinians as olive picking season begins
UN says number of West Bank checkpoints on the rise
Gaza patients continue painful wait for urgent medical treatment
Rights org: Eight years of intifada, international failure
I hope this offers you some context and I hope it gives you some tools to fight the silencing work of Zionist students on campus.
In solidarity,
Marcy
body on the line 
The author is a male and would prefer to be called such.
“We have returned to the holiest of our Holy Places, never to part from it again.”
-Moshe Dayan