Justice Lite: Feel Responsible

Toward the end of One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against All This, by Omar El Akad, he asks that sand be thrown on the gears of the Gaza genocide: if you’ve got a cupful throw it; if it’s a spoonful or fingernail, contribute that. This is my offering, couched in the context of a visit I made to Israel and Palestine in 2005.

* * * * * * *

When I was 12 or 13 I won an essay contest in our Church, The St. George’s Church of England. The essay is long lost and of course, the instructions for what to write about, but it might have been on the topic of free will, because the gist of my essay was that people should feel responsible.

I wasn’t insightful orcynical enough to add: ‘and not rely so heavily on their Christian, Get-out-of-jail-free card.’ If I had been, I probably wouldn’t have won. 

The prize was a Bible.

I didn’t like the guy teaching the Sunday School class, but I did like our minister, Reverend Alexander, and always hoped it had been he who decided the winner. After all, it had been announced during a regular church service and the prize awarded from his hand.

* * * * * * *

I never read the darn thing but always felt I should have, and now decided that these two months in The Holy Land would be the perfect opportunity: reading it where the events took place would make it stick in the memory too.

On the plane from New York to Frankfurt a lovely, young graduate student in Theology sat down beside me, on her way to the same summer adventure I was. 

Wow! I thought, a man could go astray. 

I told my ambition to the fine young student, skipping the part about the contest and prize, and she approved mightily, saying, Oh! Start with The Psalms! They are so beautiful!

I had my Bible with me and, with that encouragement, flew right into it, right there in midair! 

Well there are indeed some beautiful psalms, but these are mostly ones we already know. My father-in-law was comforted on his death bed by the 23rd, for example. However, as with most great things they are scarce.

It didn’t take long to recognize that, in general, this material had been written by some very disturbed people. With the help of Chat GPT I am able to relocate some of it today. Were it not for that help, you’d just have to take my word.

Psalm 58, 6-8 (KJV): 

6. Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth…

8. As a snail that melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.

Psalm 137: 8-9 

8. O daughter of Babylon who art to be destroyed: happy shall he be that rewardest thee as thou hast served us.

9. Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

Psalm 69: 22-28

22. Let their table become a snare before them…

23. Let their eyes be darkened that they see not…

25. Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents.

28. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living…

Psalm 109: 

10 Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.

I asked Chat if that last one, Psalm, 109, were personal or directed against the enemies of Israel, and it said I had asked an excellent question! The answer, it said, was personal, because the Psalter spoke in the first person and was directing his imprecations at singular pronouns. Chat said he was making a deeply personal plea for justice. 

Justice? OK, Chat was consulting the Psalter. I’m just the pepperer, and would not wish to exaggerate the wrongs or bad attitudes of Israel, so I’ll let it go at that.

But Jesus Fucking Christ! Talk about a need for a more merciful way! And before long He came along. If only it had made a difference, a favorable one, that is. 

In any event, it was clear to me then, as it must have been in the wisdom of my youth: I did not need to wallow around in that stuff.

My seat-mate and I dozed off, perhaps both dreaming of an ideal place. 

* * * * * * *

In a way, you have to feel for the Israelis: they want to get this little genocide in the rear view mirror and get on with normal living like everyone else. Certainly everyone else or their relatives have done the deed: in Europe, Africa, North America, wherever. But now, when poor little Israel wants a genocide, down rain the complaints. The reason, however is not a prejudice against Israel; it is that it’s so horrible to look at every day on the news. However, maybe Israel will still be allowed. We’re waiting to see if the USA will back them all the way to the end, that being ethnic cleansing, a final solution, of sorts.

To be sure, Israel’s troubles are partly of her own making: she has been a bit cavalier about expanding the list of likely enemies: attacking nearly everyone in the neighborhood, blowing international aid workers off the road, killing hundreds of journalists, bombing hospitals, schools, tent cities, infrastructure, exploding people’s cell phones as they go grocery shopping. And now (July and August, 2025), using starvation as a weapon of war, and shooting Palestinians as they approach the few available food distribution sites, the only ones allowed being run by Israeli and the U.S. It wouldn’t call for expert sniping; rather more like shooting fish in a barrel.

There were bound to be a lot of unhappy Muslims, but last week Israel bombed a Catholic church, killing the priest and a few others, potentially adding another sizable number of distressed religious folk.

If the actions of Israel, the state, weren’t enough, her allies in the ‘civilized world’ have exacerbated difficulties by attempting a rearguard action to combat ‘antisemitism.’ Both sides in this dispute, (if one may euphemistically call it that; it’s really more like a mugging) are semitic peoples. If one wanted to fight antisemitism, Israel would be the primary target, as the nation currently doing the most harm to semites. A close second would be the USA, for providing the explosives and diplomatic cover. 

When I hear that word, ‘antisemitic’ in this context I think, someone is anti-semantic. But perhaps this is being picayune; we know what they mean; they mean: Don’t be angry with Jews.

And I, for one, am not. My son married a Ukrainian, Canadian, American Jewess, and they have three boys. So not only are some of my best friends Jews, (a claim that might not cut much ice) but some of my best relatives are as well. And for that matter, I, myself, am zero point two percent Ashkenazi Jew, a fact I learned just recently from 23 And Me. That may explain a lot, by the way: I drive a 35-year old car; I really like chicken soup; and I have a mean streak, though I try hard to keep it suppressed. 

But back to the subject at hand, Jews, and especially Jewish organizations, are the most important allies Palestinians have. It has been that way for decades but is now more-so than ever.

Jews can, and do, oppose this genocide with maximum vigor and credibility. They are absolutely key to stopping it and resolving the root problem.

I spent one day in Jerusalem with the Israeli Committee Against The Demolition of Houses, ICAHD, helping rebuild a house the Israeli Defense Forces, IDF, had knocked down several times. The work team consisted of Europeans on a tour with ICAHD, Palestinian workers and ourselves, overlapping with them for that one day to hear a lecture and get the flavor of their work. On another day our group sat with the Israeli Human Rights Organization, B’Tselem; the thrust of their work at the time was documentation, partly by giving cameras to Palestinians. The point is, these are are Jewish organizations, and for that matter, Israeli.

In 2005 the term Apartheid was not in use by B’Tselem to describe Israeli Society. But it is now, and is applied by them and Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, all major, unbiased Organizations. Their reasons for employing it are thoroughly documented online. On July 28, 2025, along with Physicians For Human Rights— Israel, B’Tselem upgraded its criticism to genocide in a report called, ‘Our Genocide.’

* * * * * * *

In 2005, it seemed to me, that Palestinians in the West Bank. were already living under Apartheid, one population holding the other at gunpoint, pretty much continuously. Israeli Jeeps with young soldiers toting machine guns drove up and down the streets of Palestinian cities, and the best roads between those cities were not available to Palestinians. They were for Jews and foreigners only. 

We toured Israel and Palestine on the weekends, and when our bus took the main highways, we could get pretty much anywhere in a jiffy. But as a demonstration of what the Palestinians had to face on their own, we went one day from Bethlehem to Ramallah by the road available to them.

It required going down through what they called The Valley of Fire, because it got so warm in the summertime. Our descent was so steep and tortuous the bus had to go backward and forward to get through some of the switchbacks. 

On either side of the valley was a checkpoint, manned by young soldiers whose job, it seemed, was mainly to insult. One of them took our driver’s papers and, after looking them over, stuffed them back into his shirt pocket unceremoniously. Then they came aboard the bus with their weapons and walked the aisle, asking a scattered question.

Late in my visit, the family I lived with had to take this route to go to a wedding in Ramallah. They couldn’t use their own car because that was not allowed for inter-city travel; only commercial vehicles could be used; so they had to take a taxi to get there. That seemed like Apartheid to me.

At first I doubted the claim by one of our guides that there were over 700 checkpoints, (he gave an exact number which I forget). I thought that couldn’t be true, even with a few moving ones thrown in, because the whole place is so small. But one day, when we were visiting the rural village of At-Tuwani, near Hebron, I looked across the highway to a field and saw a little footbridge across a ditch. On either side, at the entrance to the bridge, a big scoop of dirt had been dropped for inconvenience. Ah, I thought, that’s one of the checkpoints.

* * * * * * *

On the application form for the excursion I had been given the option of paying extra money for a private room. I thought, what the heck, I’m getting on, why not go first class? And asked for the private room. No extra charges had been levied but I assumed they would be when when I checked in. 

Not only did I not get a private room, I had to sleep with Henry, a big, hairy, Jewish radical from California, approximately 250 pounds. And I do mean hairy, not especially handsome either, about my age, early sixties. 

Oh well, I thought, it’s just a couple of months, and I’m not a complainer. Besides, I knew nothing of the exigencies of our organizers. And I liked him. It would not make sense to start my visit with demands for special consideration.

Moreover, the accommodation was pleasant. And luckily, we had a king-sized bed, so we never got tangled up in the night. Moreover, on Henry’s behalf, I will say right here that he did not fart, at least that I ever noticed. I might have let slip one or two, certainly nothing offensive.

Unlike myself, who I would characterize as Justice-Lite, Henry was the real deal when it came to protesting. Like myself he had done some during the Vietnam war, but unlike myself, he had kept at it his whole life long. For a living he had been a technology writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, but he lost that job on account of being out of the office to protest the Iraq war. (My protest of that war was a cardboard sign about one foot square, saying in my printing: DON’T WRECK IRAQ. I walked it around one day in Tucson. I guess I also wrote some letters and poems, at least as unseen as my sign.

Henry first visited Israel as a toddler. His father was a tax expert and the Israeli government needed guidance setting up their system of taxation. So he and his family stayed in the honeymoon suite of the King David Hotel while his father worked. Obviously, Henry had not been won over to luxury and easy living.

He had been back to Israel numerous times since then and, already known to authorities, had been unable to come in through the Ben Gurion Airport. Instead, he had to enter by land. Why that should have been possible when The Airport was closed to him, I have no idea, but he had arrived through Jordan, enjoying the archeology of Petra as his silver lining. 

Henry was a member of International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led, non-violent protest organization which did some heavy lifting opposing injustice and oppression. Once, in the middle of our stay, they needed someone to go out right away and live with some Bedouin who were being harassed by settlers. The settlers galloped their horses over the Bedouin encampment to terrorize them, but were more inhibited when a European or American was present.

Incidentally, that job of being a witness was a well-understood function of most foreigners visiting, and it often it did work to curb the actions of settlers. But not always: some members of a group called Christian Peacemakers (in this case, I believe, from Chili) had recently been beaten up as they escorted schoolchildren to the town of At-tuwani, mentioned above.

In the event, Henry went out and lived with the Bedouin for a few days as they drove their goats, often along the side of the highway. He came back beaming, saying it was just like being in Biblical times: a little yogurt for breakfast; go out and follow the goats; and at night you sleep in a cave..

Evidence of Henry’s effectiveness as a protester and life-long activist was that his daughter and niece were inspired to be part of our program. In fact they were old hands at protesting, and led a meeting during our first week to explain how an upcoming demonstration would be made. ‘After their Friday prayers we go down to the gate the farmers have to pass through to get to their land and make a racket; the soldiers fire some tear gas at us; we run away; and then we come back; the kids throw some rocks; they chase us again; we come back again…’

What fun! I thought, but not me. It was still my first week in town. In the preceding year, the excursion I was now part (run by Middle East Fellowship in the U.S. and Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem) had been caught at the airport and turned around and sent back out on the next available plane. It seemed logical to me that this could happen to anybody at any time, and I wanted to be here at least a little while. 

That excuse, by the way, like most of its kind, is basically for timidity: it has a rational side but, of course, so does timidity. It is part and parcel of Justice Lite.

To avoid a similar, early disruption of the program this year, we had come in claiming to be here for religious study. A Kibbutz had been specified as our destination, and an Israeli from that Kibbutz was at the airport to greet us and attest to our claim, if necessary.

As it happened, we didn’t need him and didn’t go to the Kibbutz directly from the airport, though we did visit later. We were tired and went straight to Bethlehem for a short meeting, and then home to our families.

* * * * * * *

The meeting showed us to be about sixty people. I would say about a third were Muslims; one third, Jews; and the rest, Christians and Curious. I felt sure the U.S. Army or CIA must be represented, and settled on a young drunk as the most likely candidate for that. But perhaps I imagined things. However, when he disappeared (people came and went throughout the two months) an older, more stable, seemingly military fellow came along and had a brief chat with every single one of us one day on a bus ride. Anyway, on this first day, we said a few words to introduce ourselves and went straight to our lodgings.

My family lived in a comfortable two-story house of perhaps a couple of thousand square feet. In an upstairs flat was the grown son of the family, George, and his wife and daughter, a babe in arms, perhaps seven months old. When George brought her downstairs, his mother, Shimaa, would clap fiercely and rhythmically at the approach. The baby’s eyes would bug out and she literally twitched in time to the clapping. Then George passed her over, to the great satisfaction of grandmother, baby and father.

George’s own father, our host, was called Nimr, which means Tiger in Arabic. He was a factory owner and a businessman. In the basement of the house, several men worked during the day to make carvings out of Olive wood. A dump-truck once backed up to the yard and dropped a load of pieces, each about the size of a man’s forearm, some twisted, some in the shape of a Y, some with flat aspects, having been reduced from something larger. The men worked these pieces with a bandsaw, then a rotary tool, then knives and chisels, and finally sandpaper and lacquer. The result was usually a charming religious figure. I left with a whole suitcase full to give away as presents, keeping a Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph nativity scene for myself. 

Nimr was a quiet, pleasant man, maybe five or ten years younger than me, and cast from the same mold as Henry: I remember them sitting side by side on our first evening, only a few pounds in the difference, and hard to say who was heavier.

The last member of the household was a girl, George’s sister, the youngest child. She was in her last year of High School, bubbly and with like-minded friends who often visited and bubbled over with her. There might have been other children who had left home; I don’t remember.

The house had a pleasant front porch facing the street, and we sat there sometimes in the evening, being visited by neighbors and relatives. There was also sizable yard with a productive fig tree; perhaps there were other fruit trees as well but Nimr called my attention to the fig one day.

Mine and Henry’s bedroom was suitably large, on the ground floor just to the right of the door at the front of the house where you entered. The dining room, kitchen and bathroom were deeper in the house on the same floor, straight ahead.

One feature of Palestinian houses is a water tank on the roof. The Israelis come by and give an allocation, weekly, I think. When a person showered, he got wet, turned the water off, soaped up, turned it on again, and rinsed. Once I was taking a shower when I was alone in the house, and had soaped up when the water ran out. I hoped nobody thought I was profligate. 

A downside to this arrangement, besides the obvious, scarcity, was mosquitoes, little tiny ones. We had to do battle with them at night, protecting ourselves either with fly dope or a device that sat on top of a bureau and dispersed repellent. 

Another memory I have of night and bedtime was the scattered crackle of gunfire a few miles away in one of the Bethlehem refugee camps. There were three, made of concrete and cinder block, more or less permanent. The IDF kicked on doors after dark and arrested bad children (or good) according to your perspective. When we visited one of these, Ayda, we were told through a translator that a big problem was bed-wetting. The kids were frightened and wetting the bed long after they should have been past it.

We woke before dawn to the call of the muezzin, not something I particularly enjoyed. In literature I recall indistinctly (maybe Lawrence Durrell) it’s supposed to be a soothing and pleasing sound, but our guy had an amplifier that made his call harsh and uninviting, at least to me. Luckily we were of other faiths, or none, and didn’t have to get up.

* * * * * *

When I was an undergraduate student at Bradley University in Illinois, my favorite class was a Psychology Lecture by a grand old man, Carl Smith. He had come to the Midwest from Harvard and was, in my mind, manifestly wise. He was knowledgeable of Science, and presumably accomplished (thought I actually made no effort to verify it; I simply believed it), and he used to talk without notes, displaying his erudition and cynicism on a panoply of subject matters. He had rubbed elbows with Bertrand Russell and other famous people, and let us know what they thought about various things too. A friend of mine, who I didn’t yet know at that time, was similarly affected, and said he used to look forward to that class, more or less imagining himself to be sitting at the great man’s feet. 

Once, as we were leaving for Christmas Holidays, our famous professor said: You know, that saying you’re so fond of at this time of year: ‘Peace on Earth, Good will toward men?’ It doesn't say that in the original. It says: ‘Peace on Earth to men of good will.’ 

Obviously, there was quite a distinction, and I could see the greater cogency of the version he offered. It had a corollary: No peace if you’re not of good will.

* * * * * *

I referred to myself as being Justice-Lite, alluding to the amount of danger, sacrifice and inconvenience I was willing to accept to achieve it. And that’s a bit of a shame, considering what Justice normally requires in order to be achieved. There’s a saying: When you go out to fight for Truth and Justice, don’t wear your best trousers. It’s funny but sad, because there’s usually a lot more at risk than your trousers.

The position of ‘The Establishment,’ if I may resort to an old moniker, is that protest is fine, so long as it’s peaceful and within the Law. But The Law is sometimes the problem, and failing to create a disturbance may mean failing to get attention.

Nelson Mandela said he understood perfectly that he could have spent his life writing letters to no effect. If he was going to get noticed he had to do some damage. He decided he was not going to kill people, but he was going to attack infrastructure. Only then would he have the spotlight and be able to make a courtroom speech about ideas he was prepared to die for.

Courage is the greatest human virtue, I am quite sure. Most of us know very well what is right. We just don’t want to get hurt saying it; don’t want to put our bodies in the way of machinery opposing it. And it is machinery: bone-crushing, blood-spilling, itself insensitive to pain.

In The Pickwick Papers, Mr. Pickwick advises Mr. Snodgras about dealing with trouble on the street. ‘Hush. Don’t ask any questions. It’s always best on these occasions to do what the mob do.’

‘But suppose there are two mobs, suggested Mr. Snodgrass.

‘Shout with the largest, replied Mr. Pickwick.’

This is the kind of advice most of us don’t have to be told. We embrace Justice-Lite, or Justice-Very-Lite, or No-Justice-At-All, for the obvious reasons: cowardice and convenience.

However, rather than berate myself entirely, allow me instead to make the case for Justice-Lite and/or Justice-Very-Lite. The Vietnam War was a sickening event for anyone with a modicum of sensitivity. In one of its phases it was perpetrated, in large part, by the U.S.A. I was a Canadian graduate student in Neuroscience at The University of Oregon, but regarded the whole country as my part of the world then. Hence, I was responsible.

My part in protesting that war consisted in writing a lot of letters to the editors of newspapers around the U.S., going to protests, and disrupting one graduate seminar when it was my turn to lead: I insisted that we use half of the time to talk Science; the other half, Politics. 

I  like to think I had some small part in the decision of the USA to withdraw from Vietnam: I once got a sympathetic letter about one of my letters from a lady in a southeastern state; and my supervisor, who was liberally inclined but not inclined to be disruptive, approved of my balancing act in the seminar. But if I had any effect at all, it must have been very small indeed, compared to that of students who were occupying administration buildings and getting carted around bodily by the Police, never mind shot on Kent Campus.

My feeling of responsibility for that international disaster, however, served a real purpose after the Americans left Vietnam. The exodus of Boat People began, and that was a spectacle to further illustrate the suffering we had created. At this point, my wife and I had gone to Canada to take University jobs and enjoy family life in Newfoundland. 

Then, about eight years into that new life, I recruited five other families in our rural town of Portugal Cove to join us in sponsoring a family of Boat People. I had just quit my academic job so was free to use a sizable chunk of time on such a venture. I suggested that I and the man of the family we brought would do a half day’s work weekly at each of our houses, digging ditches, painting walls, whatever; I would get an extra half day for my contribution of labor. The Canadian government only required we be on the hook financially for one year. 

As it turned out, our family went to Vancouver after spending just the Fall of 1979 in Newfoundland. Lee Bo found factory work out there and they thrived in a more culturally supportive and stimulating environment. Meanwhile, the enterprise made us Newfoundland families closer, and it was a happy experience for everyone.

So there is the potential for good to come of feeling responsible, and a place in this world for Justice Lite.

* * * * * *

The structure of our week was as follows: We had breakfast with our families and then spent the week-day mornings assigned to a Palestinian group or an NGO that could put us to work. We found lunch for ourselves and, in the afternoons, went to the Bethlehem Bible College for Arabic lessons. On Saturdays we toured Israel and Palestine, usually taking the whole day to see one town. Sunday was free.

The best student in our Arabic class was an American-Iranian girl who said that Farsi was not dissimilar. Mostly what we did in class was baby talk for her. But it was hard enough for me. 

One funny incident entailed repeating the elementary claims: I am a student; we are students. The word for student was Talib; the plural (though Chat GPT tells me this is Pashto, not Arabic) is Taliban. Maybe I misunderstood, but I’m quite sure this is what we were told to say, Taliban. After we said we were Taliban, we looked around the room involuntarily to see who else was a terrorist, and laughed.

I had listed my skill, to be used on work mornings, as writer. Consequently, my mornings were spent at the Beit Sahour mayor’s office where I helped write applications for money to buy equipment for the town. European sources provided cash for such purposes and our job was to write up a reason for getting it, plus, select a suitable item from catalogues indicating cost.

Beit Sahour shared a garbage truck with Beit Jala, another Bethlehem suburb on the far side from us. We wanted a truck of our own, if possible. There were other pieces of heavy machinery that could also be useful: it just needed to be well- and simply-stated. 

We had catalogues from various suppliers and on one occasion, a choice to make between Caterpillar and some other. Caterpillar was more expensive and I suggested we ask for that, since they could change their minds later and have money left over for something else. This was not the choice of others in the office, but they were unwilling to dismiss my reasoning, and more or less let the matter hang for the moment.

I slept on it. I knew very well why they didn’t want to support Caterpillar: they had seen too many of them pushing over Palestinian houses. But I was thinking to maximize the request for money. I came back the next day and said they should just ignore me when I was off base; they knew what was best for their image and  needs and overall purposes.

That resolved well enough, but there were other matters, of personal interaction, that did not. We had been asked by our organizers to please not get involved romantically with the natives. It created enormous problems.

I don’t talk very much, or very loudly, or very well, and sometimes, am simply dumbstruck. So I greeted a couple of invitations that were probably just friendly and innocent with a mute, thousand-yard-stare. I couldn’t think of anything to say. 

They shifted me out of the main office with frequent Turkish Coffee to a downstairs station with a chance to thumb through magazines and more or less do nothing. I have no doubt that at some point they must have decided: there is something seriously wrong with this guy, an opinion I frequently share. If we had had a Kindergarten teacher she would have had to write on my card: Does not work well with others.

* * * * * *

I took the bus fairly often, but My main means of transportation around Bethlehem and Beit Sahour was shank’s mare. Rarely, perhaps only once, I used a taxi. That was to get me home from East Jerusalem one day when I somehow ended up there alone. The distances I had to travel were only a few miles and I liked walking. 

I, and other members of our excursion, stood out as we walked around Bethlehem, but I had the notion that we were basically appreciated and protected. I did have to decline an offer of a ride in a car with three men (the guy in the back seat patting the spot where he wanted me to sit) but basically I was left alone. 

There was another occasion, when I was on my way to the Bible College for afternoon Arabic lessons, traveling my normal route, when a young man came out of a shop and asked why I was there. We were quickly surrounded by a number of people, all interested to hear the answer. They had probably planned this journalistic ambush that was in no way threatening.

I said, to begin with, I was from Canada, but that didn’t cut any ice with anyone who knew Canada’s position on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Canada, like the USA, professed to be a staunch ally of Israel, no questions asked. Nor did this answer the question I had been asked. 

I went on to say I was there because I wanted The Palestinians to know that not everyone in my part of the world felt the way our governments acted. I was here to show support for their cause. They seemed to accept that, as indeed, they should have: if they had been looking around, it would have been nothing new to them. 

There were visitors from all over the world with this outlook. The ICAHD work, for example, which I participated in for one day, was a weeks-long excursion for participants from Europe and North America. There were quite a few people on private excursions from Europe who were there, not just to see the place, but to serve as witnesses and mitigate the oppression. Also there organized religious visits. Once a religions procession from Korea came down Manger Street, occupying the width of it and bearing a big banner in front that said ‘Korea loves Palestine.’ 

But not all of my foot travel went unassailed. One Sunday I decided to go to an Internet Cafe I had not visited to that point. I had instructions on how to get to it, and set off thinking, as the crow flies, it’s somewhere over there. It was a nice sunny day and I was carrying my laptop in my backpack.

Going along an unfamiliar road with few houses on it, I was overtaken by a couple of boys, about 14 or 15, who came up to me, holding out their hands and saying: Dollar, dollar, dollar.

I knew the smallest thing in my wallet was a twenty, and had no intention of getting it out. I said No, La, and kept walking.

They kept walking with me and repeating their request, which was turning more and more into a demand. I still said no. 

One of them tried to open my backpack and I wheeled on him and scowled. He backed off, but they continued walking with me, inviting me, at one point, to come off the road and follow along a path. Not likely.

Then the bigger boy got out a pocket knife and opened the blade and made stabbing gestures accompanied by disagreeable faces. 

I was angry and agitated but honestly not afraid. They were about my height but both slighter, and I would have fought with them if I had to, though I certainly preferred not. My tricks of combat are from seven or eight years of judo, best suited to one-on-one encounters, as opposed to, say, ten-on-one, a la Bruce Lee. Nor did I have a bigger knife like Crocodile Dundee. But if I hoped not to fight, I certainly was not giving money to these little miscreants. 

We kept walking. 

In the near distance I could see that we were coming to more houses, and that someone was outside one of them. One of my insights about travel in foreign lands is that, in public, a person is generally pretty safe. It’s when he gets off to himself, as I had in this case, that all bets are off.

As we got closer and closer, their opportunity was slipping away. I could sense it, and so could they. They let it. 

Shortly before the houses there was a fork in the road. We took alternate branches, they going one way and I the other. 

Somehow, I knew the Arabic word for shame, ear, (although I had to look it up, just now), and I raised my voice to call it after them.

Nor was I the only one to have unpleasant interaction with Palestinians. One day, when I arrived at the Holy Land Trust Office, our regular hangout on Manger Street, one of our young women was crying unconsolably despite being comforted by other women. She had been surrounded by a bunch of boys who groped her and pulled at her clothing. Whether more had happened than that, or how she escaped, I don’t know.

I tried to find out more details but was rebuffed by our MEF leader, who would have preferred that nobody know anything about such happenings. It seemed to me he was implying that I was wrong to ask. That pissed me off because I felt the world was not much changed by such events, but that pretending it was might actually make things worse.

We all know that crimes are committed by members of all groups. And we know that prudence might dictate avoiding them in certain situations. But anyone who would leap to condemnation of whole groups is hardly worth arguing with. 

Likewise, by the way. with anyone who extolls the virtues of whole groups, be they Jewish, Aryan or whatever. The accomplishments and the hazards may well be real, but that tells us nothing about how to deal with the groups from which the individuals come. There has to be a distinction between public policy and private considerations. We have to try, at least, to treat all groups alike. 

* * * * * *

I am a poet so perhaps it will be admissible to include a poem occasionally, so long as it is more or less on the topic at hand. This one I wrote in 2014.

Poem For A Greater Israel

You have the whip hand.

Put it down.

If Jews are clever,

quit lashing out.

As for murder, mutilation,

mass destruction and stealing

other people’s land and water,

bulldozing their houses,

Apartheid,

where can this get you

but put off the bus 

Humanity’s hoping to ride?

For the love of personal

Peace and Possibility,

try a change!

* * * * * *

There were numerous indoor and outdoor seating areas where we could talk, listen to music, smoke those hookahs, and so on. I have smoked off and on for the sake of augmenting the effects of alcohol, but never considered myself addicted. Smoking is an intrinsically social activity and I was pleased to try it in a new form, though I was indifferent to the flavors proffered: apple, for example.

Nonetheless it provided a focus for conversation lulls, and felt especially Middle Eastern. I sat one evening with a group in their twenties and thirties, including our youngest participant, a Norwegian girl of 17, just out of High School. She had needed more than a day to get through the airport in Tel Aviv, the authorities there doing their level best to save her from the Arabs. I forget how she finally got in, probably by phone calls to our organizers and then helpful Israelis like the one scheduled to meet us and take us to his Kibbutz. 

Usually the music playing was Middle Eastern, with that peculiar, driving swirl which, if you played it for me now, I might easily mistake for Indian sitar or Persian something or other. Obviously, I didn’t know what I was listening to most of the time. Sometimes, however it was good old Bob Marley, saying Get Up, Stand Up, Stand Up For Your Rights, Get Up, Stand Up, Don’t Give Up De Fight. 

I was listening to that latter once, sitting on an outdoor terrace and talking to a young Palestinian American. His father, Mazin Qumsiyeh, was a molecular biologist at Yale and had written a book called Sharing The Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle. 

I hadn’t read it at the time but have it on my lap at the moment; it is clearly the work of a polymath, including scholarly treatment, complete with references, of ancient history, modern history, linguistics, genetics, politics, religion, geography and pretty much whatever else might pertain to the conflict.

Beyond its educational purpose, the thesis of the book is that a shared, binational state based on equal human rights for all is preferable to a Two-State framework, which is unrealistic because of current facts on the ground: settlements, fragmentation, unequal resource distribution.

This is precisely what I have believed, for decades, and often tried to write about in a page or two of pleading. I once considered buying a full-page ad in the New York Times, thinking: If only people could see The Truth! The Necessity! The Way! 

I have had this impulse periodically but always snap out of it, thinking: Ain’t you quaint. Then, before long, I get worked up about it again and think it’s possible, maybe inevitable. It’s the only solution. 

Didn’t I once think that South Africa had to burn? Then Mandela came out of prison and led the country. And it didn’t burn! All it took was the insight (by President F. W. De Klerk and others) that Apartheid had to end, one way or another. They chose the less destructive. Why couldn’t this same thing happen in Israel/Palestine. After all, A Truth, once seen by a single mind ends up imposing itself on the totality of human consciousness (Anonymous).

The two-state solution is a recipe for prolonged conflict. It’s already impossible, though some limited version of it might be included in the basic idea proposed by Qumsiyeh. Basically, there would be a Federation with each side creating bylaws for a territory on either side of the Green Line, which existed prior to 1967. Everyone should be free to walk wherever he or she wanted, on either side of that line, and economic forces alone determine what belongs to whom. Private property would be respected and there might be limited autonomy for special religious sites that had to be respected. But otherwise, integrations. All that’s required is to admit that people are equal and need access to basic, human rights.

OK, the devil is in the details: It would be no small matter to develop such a plan, and it would require swallowing some hard pills: There might be some lingering hard feelings after the last few years of war. But integration is necessary. A Palestinian would have the right to buy a house anywhere, especially in those modern Jewish settlements built on the wrong side of The Green Line. And an Israeli could live in Bethlehem, in a refugee camp, if he so desired.

Here’s a conundrum: People crave separation: If only they could get their enemies to go away! If only they could be entirely alone! Yet, if they were entirely alone, they would be at far greater risk of being obliterated. Having the undesired population intermingled is inherent safety, because nobody wants to drop a bomb on large numbers of people of their own persuasion.

There have been efforts to extricate Jews from Iran. A wealthy individual, unspecified, offered them $30,000 to move to Israel. But they did not wish to leave. I remember reading about this decades ago. Then PBS investigated the

Scraps.

Which is what I started to tell about before getting sidetracked with details of my own situation. The way they lived looked like Apartheid to me, the most obvious infringement on their freedom being freedom of movement.

; and while the term Apartheid may not have been used by B’Tselem at that time, it seemed to me appropriate.

* * * * * *

Scraps.

Shortly after my visit I decided I was not going to throw myself into the maw that that quarrel is; and I returned to North American living, enjoying my family and relative luxury of a house and five acres in Newfoundland. I remain pleased with that decision, happy to have had a couple of decades of comfort with my now-deceased wife. I have no plans to return to Israel and Palestine at this point, but the least I can do is add my voice and story, however trivial, to the rising chorus calling for an end to the genocide, and even to the misery in general.

In another context altogether, I once asked a woman if she liked dancing. She said, As far as I’m concerned that’s what we were put here for. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Though I have had little systematic training in the subject (just a couple of classes for the public in various places), I have always been disposed to waggle my arse and squirm about when the right kind of music was on. So I was pleased to see that there were opportunities for that sort of thing in The Holy Land. Probably, there always have been, and that’s partly what makes us so numerous. One supposes even Moses got down every once in a while, burning bushes being hard to ignore, and God calling out therefrom.

Once when we were visiting Paris our hostess advised my wife that Arabic men were a hazard and should be avoided at train stops, etc. It would be difficult, and perhaps foolish, to ignore such advice. But there has to be a distinction between what pertains to public policy and what to personal safety. One hears, for example, that middle class African Americans might cross the road to avoid encountering a bunch of dark-skinned boys. Does that mean we should go back to slavery or separate-but-equal?

When I was an undergraduate at Bradley University my favorite class was a Psychology Lecture by a grand old man, Carl Smith, who had come from Harvard. In my mind, he was manifestly wise, and I used to enjoy his erudition and cynicism and witticisms generally. He knew Science, and had rubbed elbows with Bertrand Russell and other famous people. 

Once as we were leaving for our Christmas Holidays he said: You know, that saying you’re so fond of at this time of year: ‘Peace on Earth, good will toward men.’ It doesn't say that at all. It says: ‘Peace on Earth to men of good will.’ 

Obviously, there was quite a distinction, and I could see the greater cogency of the version offered. It also had a corollary: No peace for you if you’re not of good will. It might not even be too great a leap to say: God damn you.