Apartheid is lived daily

July 19, 2011
I learned more today than I have any other day of my life.

In the morning, our amazing tour guide took us to the Old City--the section of East Jerusalem enclosed by the original wall built by the Romans--and we saw most of the holiest sites for Jews, Muslims and Christians. After going through a couple of security stations and metal detectors, we began our tour by going to the grounds of the Al-Aqsa Mosque--considered the third-holiest site to Muslims.

On September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon disrespected the Palestinians by entering the grounds of the mosque with some 1,500 riot police, which touched off the second Intifada ("uprising" in English), or what's known as the "Al-Aqsa Intifada." While our guide was explaining the religious significance of the mosque and the political history of its link to the Intifada, a group of Israeli settlers, escorted by the Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers, came to the grounds of the mosque to provoke the Palestinians. In a show of resistance, the Palestinians began chanting "Allah Akbar"--"God is great." As their chants grew louder and more IDF showed up, it became quite tense, and even the IDF realized that the settlers should move along.

We then proceeded to some of the most sacred places to the three major monotheistic religions--including walking the path that Jesus took while he carried his cross to his crucifixion and the tomb from which he was resurrected.

In the afternoon we met with Micha, a former IDF soldier and now a member of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). Micha was also the founding member of Breaking the Silence, an organization of former IDF soldiers speaking out against the occupation. He gave us a great history of the Zionist movement and the founding of Israel, and at each point in his talk he explained the lies he learned in school and the reality of life for the Palestinians.

Afterward, our delegation traveled with him on a tour of Jerusalem where he showed us this reality--and how the Israeli system of apartheid works to control and degrade Palestinians. Since the 1970s, all of the city of Jerusalem is part of Israel--divided into East Jerusalem where Palestinians live and West Jerusalem where Jewish Israelis live.

We drove down a road in West Jerusalem with nice sidewalks and tree-lined streets, only to see it all disappear into the East Jerusalem ghetto. The first thing Micha pointed out were the small water towers on top of all of the houses because Israel doesn't supply the Palestinians with proper water.

He showed us Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem housed in trailers--no gym, no playground, no science labs...I immediately thought of the school/trailers in Haiti that the Clinton Foundation provided in Léogâne that were recently exposed to be filled with formaldehyde, forcing the school year to end early because the kids were getting sick...Ahhh, occupations...

Micha explained that as the textbooks in these Palestinian schools wear out, they are increasingly receiving Israeli textbooks, which describe the founding of Israel as a great movement for independence instead of a genocide and dispossession.

He showed us a home that had been bulldozed by the Israeli government and explained the policy that has led to hundreds of Palestinians losing their homes: Palestinians have to get permits to modify their homes or build new ones, but they can only get these permits if they have the original documents and blueprints for their buildings. Since only wealthy Palestinians can have someone draw up these documents, the vast majority of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem can be deemed illegal and subject to demolition.

The Israelis will post a note giving warning, and then they will show up unannounced, remove the furniture from a home while most of the family is gone, and bulldoze it to the ground. Micha told us of one student who brought his favorite toy to school every day because he wasn't sure when the bulldozers were coming.

Next he took us to a section of the apartheid wall--the so-called "security barrier"--that breaks up East Jerusalem. The wall is really overwhelming: 30 feet in the air and spanning some 600 miles. Micha broke down why the wall has nothing to do with Israeli security.

There are enough gaps in the wall that anyone motivated enough to conduct a suicide bombing would probably be up for driving the extra couple of hours out of the way to get around the barrier. Moreover, Hamas has renounced suicide bombings. The real reasons behind the wall became clear to us on the ground--to cut off Palestinians from important resources, such as water aquifers, and to cut off Palestinians from their land in order to open up space for more Israeli settlers to take over Palestinian land.

But as someone spray-painted on the wall, "The hands that build can also tear down."

July 22, 2011
We were all tense as we entered our bus this morning.

The night before, the African Heritage delegation to Palestine held a meeting to discuss how we would cope with our scheduled meeting in the morning with a group of Israeli settlers in Hebron led by the notorious right-wing extremist David Wilder. My dad Gerald had met with one of their representatives when he saw him three years ago, and he had been upfront about the fact that Jewish people would take over Hebron, even if it meant killing all the Palestinians.

We were originally scheduled to meet with Wilder himself, but he was going to be away, so we were planning on meeting with one of his spokespeople. Our decision, as an African American delegation, to meet with his spokesperson wasn't made lightly. Several members of our delegation had direct confrontations with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in Mississippi and in Birmingham, Ala., among other places, during the 1950s and 60s.

We felt that to meet with this Israeli settlement society that is openly racist and proud of terrorizing Palestinians, throwing them out of their homes at gun point, and spitting on their children, would be akin to sitting down with the KKK to hear why they hate Black folks. Needless to say, we didn't decide to go to this meeting without a lot of consideration. We concluded that we would be stronger advocates for Palestinian rights if we had heard directly from these settlers and could explain their ideological connection to the KKK with greater vividness.

As it turns out, the spokesman we met with made a concerted attempt to hide the message that my dad had gotten before--most likely due to the fact that we were an African American delegation, and he knew from the jump that we wouldn't like anything he said. He even tried to impress us by telling us that he has an Arab friend!

Even with the restraint he was showing, he couldn't resist a few disgusting lies, such as the settlers are justified in taking Palestinian land because Palestinians choose not to be citizens. After saying his piece, he quickly cut off questions before I could get anything out and told us we could go to their museum where we would be met by a guide that could answer any further questions. I was hoping that we would get a chance to grill this guide about the settlements--but the guide never showed up.

We then left to see the Palestinian side of the so-called H2-designated part of the city of Hebron. Every part of the Palestinian territory has a different legal designation--Zone A, B, C, H-1 and H-2. When we got out of the van at the checkpoint, we were approached by a Palestinian kid, maybe four years old, who was selling bracelets. The IDF soldiers didn't want the kid around us, and a soldier ran up to our delegation with his M-16 and told the kid to get behind the barricade. This kid put a smile on my face as he was obviously taunting the soldiers in Arabic and running in between our legs to avoid the clutches of the IDF.

Finally, the soldier got a hold of his collar and dragged him behind the barrier.

Next we went through the checkpoint to the Ibrahim Mosque--the same mosque where in 1994 an Israeli settler came in and shot down scores of Palestinians. In fact, later in the day we met a 19-year-old kid whose father was killed in the massacre and his family left destitute, so he was on the street selling bracelets to tourists. While inside the mosque, dozens of M-16 toting IDF came inside on a tour to see the tomb where Abraham is buried--not bothering to remove their shoes (like everyone else) in an effort to humiliate the Palestinians.

Finally, we met up with our tour guide, a man named Issa. Issa is the leader of Students Against Settlements. His first words to us related the story of getting there to see us that day by crossing the checkpoint. The IDF soldiers asked for his papers, took them and without looking at them sat back down in their station. When he complained that they had left him standing there for no reason, they came and hit him in the stomach. Issa then got the commanding officer and complained to him, but the commander said he was lying. Finally, they let him pass when he recited the law and threatened to contact an Israeli lawyer he knows.

Issa began the tour by showing us how the Palestinians closed down shops in H-2 Hebron (meaning that Israel maintains security control and control of the municipal government). The Israeli government wants to transfer all the Palestinians in H-2 Hebron to H-1 where the Israelis control the security but the Palestinians maintain the municipality and the social services.

The most incredible part of the tour came when we entered a section of the shopping district in the alleyway that had metal grates over the top of the corridor. Issa explained that the settlement we had gone to earlier that day was directly above us, and that the Palestinians work and live down below where we were standing. It was immediately apparent why they had constructed a grate over the entire corridor: the settlers had thrown all kinds of garbage, rocks and knives to the lower level. We saw one section of the grating that had been destroyed by acid they had thrown down, and we found out that now they urinate out of their windows on the Palestinian shops.

As we were leaving Hebron, I saw a concrete block that someone had spray-painted: "Zionism is racism."

July 21, 2011
Today the African Heritage delegation met with representatives of the African Palestinian community who have a small district in the Old City of Jerusalem. African Muslims making their pilgrimage to Mecca from Senegal and North Africa would often add a trip to Palestine to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Over time, some of these Africans stayed and built up a community.

These African brothers and sisters welcomed us and told us of their double burden of fighting against the Israeli occupation and against racism. They were careful to distinguish between the prejudice they can sometimes receive from their Arab Palestinian brothers and sisters and the institutional racism that is perpetrated against them from the Israeli state.

This African Palestinian community lives very close to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and they have become some of the primary caretakers of it. That is why when Arial Sharon and his Israeli security forces entered the grounds of the mosque, these African Palestinians played an important role in the second Intifada.

The man we spoke to spent over a decade in an Israel prison for his involvement with the resistance. He told us a moving story of a successful hunger strike they undertook to get a basketball so they could have some recreation. My thoughts immediately strayed back to the United States where inmates at California's Pelican Bay State Prison have inspired prisoners across California and beyond to conduct a hunger strike for their rights.

As Mark, a member of our African Heritage delegation, has repeated often on our trip, "Oppression uses the same playbook the world over, and so does liberation."

July 22, 2011
After all I have learned from my teacher and friend Aaron Dixon, the founder of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party, I was especially intrigued and excited to learn about the Black Panther Party of Israel (I'll refer to it as BPP-I). We were met by a young European Israeli who introduced us to the history of the BPP-I and showed us a short film about the founding of the party. Later we got a walking tour from Reuben Abergel, an original founder of the Israeli Black Panthers.

The BPP-I was formed in the early 1970s by Mizrahi Jews. These Jews of North African and Middle Eastern descent faced severe racism in Israeli society--publicly spoken of by Israeli politicians as animals, denied access to proper education and housing, barred from jobs.

They thought about naming their organization the Roaring Lions, but they decided it would put more fear in the Israeli government to associate themselves with the militancy of the Black Panthers--and it worked. Israel freaked out, and Mizrahi Jews began joining.

Critically, the BPP-I didn't limit their political activity to defending Mizrahi Jews, but also joined in solidarity with Palestinians struggling for their rights in an important showing of solidarity across religions in the struggle for social justice.