MILLIONS WILL MARCH
REPORT ON IFOR DELEGATION TO EUROPE JANUARY 2012 AND EXTENDED VISIT TO ISRAEL/PALESTINE.
HOPE AGAINST HOPE – EGYPT PART I
Two years ago we joined 1200 people from 40 nations to seek access to Gaza through the Raffah Gate on the Sinai on the anniversary of the Gaza War to stand in solidarity with Palestinians in protest of the horrors of occupation. Access was denied to the majority of us and the future looked hopeless.
Today that gate is open and goods are flowing to support construction and development in Gaza. And Egypt is a very different place. Yet the situation is, in many ways, more desperate and the reliance on hope in an uncertain future more intense.
Our delegation of twelve (eleven Europeans and myself, representing five branches of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation), met with a dozen organizations over a six day period ranging from senior Confessional leaders, to political and governmental representatives, and including a range of NGO and academic groups. Without exception they were energized and proud of what the Egyptian people have accomplished in overthrowing an autocratic bureaucracy and beginning an open journey to an alternative future. And also without exception they were anxious and concerned about what shape that future would finally take. They all agreed, almost no one would have predicted the success of the Revolution in 2011, and no one is confident that they know or can predict the outcomes of 2012.
The biggest concern is the continuing control of the Army (the SCAF) which is viewed as threatened and therefore dangerous, corrupt, pervasive, duplicitous, resistant to change, and yet in the end reducible to civilian control under continuing pressure of the Egyptian people. One long time dissident noted that in militarized dictatorships the army always hates civilian leadership and the transition to civilian control and leadership is fraught with danger. Another life-long dissident and one of the founders of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party spoke rather to the questionable competence of the SCAF referencing interminable meetings reaching few conclusions.
Organizer and blogger, Egypt’s “Facebook Girl” Esraa Abdel Fatah, at the Egyptian Democratic Academy (www.egyda.org), agreed that while the SCAF is undependable – changing rules to suit its needs – the extended election process being an illustration – the changes worked in favor of their organizing strategy of a cascade model of grassroots leadership training from village to village across Egypt.
There was also very general agreement that the secret service, while operating without a name or public identity, is accountable to the SCAF and more active than ever. Its reach apparently extends outside of Egypt, tracing one participant in an IFOR event to foreign shores. It is particularly attentive to foreign visitors and residents which is seen as a residual intent to blame outside forces for the Revolution. Some ex-patriot residents are more careful now about their movements and engagements than before the Revolution.
The next biggest concern is for the nature of pluralism in post-Revolutionary Egypt, especially at the Confessional level. The Christian minority is still substantial enough, and diverse enough in its own right, to bear most of the burden of this concern. But “secular” and moderate Muslims also voiced concerns about the potential issue of greater influence on social conventions and personal status freedoms from the Salafists, a very conservative Wahhabist strain of Islam with strong links to Saudi Arabia.
Most people we spoke to saw the Muslim Brotherhood as a long-struggling, patient, conservative but responsible religious and political presence which has earned a right to take leadership in the new Egypt. While not completely confident, most believe the Muslim Brotherhood will be the Parliamentary contingent that ensures the new Constitution preserves the first four articles of the 1971 Constitution which protect much of the personal liberties of the various Confessions that make up Egypt’s social fabric. They expect initial Constitutional changes to focus on limiting the power of the President moving forward.
There is a clear courtship of sectarian leadership, grounded in historic interfaith dialogue practices, which is testing the strength of their shared ties during the period of transition. The Melkite-Greek Catholic Patriachate, SB Gregorios III, for example, who could have been in his offices in any number of countries which come under his See, from Egypt to Turkey (Alexandria to Antioche and including Jerusalem), met with us for an hour prior to an appointment with the Grand Mufti Ali Gomar at Al Azhar. The Patriarch, who spoke in fluent German, is in his late 70s and of Lebanese-Syrian heritage, showed more flexibility and vision than some of his younger colleagues we met, one of whom characterized Islam as an ideology inhospitable to democracy, rather than a religion. This was but one of a number of examples of differences of opinion within faith communities which were sometimes greater than apparent differences between faith communities. Younger Coptic priests, for example, were quicker to join the Revolution than their seniors, and significant numbers of Muslims find the Salafists refusal to engage in dialogue problematic if not repugnant.
The third major concern, and the globally common ticking time-bomb is the problem of poverty. Embedded in a severely corrupt economic system, an educational system which leaves more than 30% of the population illiterate, a demographic distortion of a huge unemployed youth population, and an infrastructure worn frayed if it ever were firm, the urgency of issues worry everyone. We have and will continue to see evidence of concern over subsidized prices for food, fuel, and fundamental services toppling short-term governments in Egypt and all across Africa in the news every day. Today is it Nigeria or Southern Sudan, tomorrow it could be Egypt which erupts in anger and frustration.
But the source of hope, in the face of such trials, is the triumph of the nonviolence in Tahrir Square last January and the recently completed Parliamentary elections in which 70% of the electorate voted. Social Scientist and founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center, Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, (http://www.cartercenter.org/peace/human_rights/defenders/defenders/Egypt_saad_eddin_ibrahim.html) noted that the rate of participation challenges the proposition that universal literacy is required for democratic processes to work.
Esraa Abdel Fatah and her colleagues Salem Tarek and Yuweida were the first of many we met to voice the belief that today the people believe they were and will be heard and that is the democratizing force which gives them hope and confidence that Egypt will successfully transform itself to a transparent and free society. It is an expectation that may take many years, even a succession of Parliamentary elections. There seems to be an inherent understanding that the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.
Our delegation host, Magdy Garas, head of Caritas – Egypt, could also point with justifiable pride to the work of this charitable NGO with street children, with mothers and their babies in neo-natal clinics, and with preschoolers in five cities across Egypt, to the capacity of Egyptians to address their situation creatively and compassionate. And Samy Nashad, in his 25th year as National Executive of the Egyptian YMCA could point to their branches in 25 cities across Egypt as one more place where rising leadership received their early training in community development demonstrating a fully available a proficient Egyptian capacity to succeed.
“OUR METANOIA” – EGYPT PART II
The metaphor of spring as an awakening is certainly not lost on the Arab world, harking back as it does to early 20th century efforts to throw off the yoke of colonialism. The family of terms that would include intifada and jihad also blend with the expression of metanoia (repentance, transformation of the heart) now voiced by some Christian clerics who in a guilt tinged tone affirm that they have been complicit in reign of Mubarak, preferring the devil they knew to the responsibility they had to truth and justice.
Members of our delegation who come out of a more deeply reflective Christian framework than many in the West (either from a secular Europe or the failed Protestant experiment of North America), were surprised that for the first time in decades of visits the public voice of the Church was ready to affirm its shared responsibility for the conditions of the Egyptian poor.
Confessional spokespersons were ready to entertain the possibility that attacks on Christians were as likely to be directed by the government (i.e. SCAF) to sow dissension as they were to be acts of bigotry by otherwise historically friendly Muslim neighbors. And Muslims shared similar suspicions that confrontations between the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists might be blowback from Mubarak’s attempts to contain the rising power of the Brotherhood (which he and Sadat and Nasser before him tolerated as an exemplary opposition) with the addition of a Saudi nurtured Salafist undercurrent. (Shades of the history of the Taliban and Hamas as initial creations of colonial powers to prop themselves up by introducing threats of their own construction.)
The petard of migration is falsely used, according to the Christians we talked to (!), to suggest an issue of loyalty which has no religious basis. It is true that out-migration has accelerated over the past year, but this is as true for Muslims as for Christians, and points to economic conditions rather than new threats of discrimination and persecution according to Christians and Muslims alike. It is easy for Christians in particular to slip into anecdote after anecdote of rising conservatism, but those can be part of comfortable conversations with Muslim friends just as easily as with fellow Christians. It is a concern that they share, not that separates them. Like virtually every issue we raised, this one became more interesting and complicated the more we talked about it. What is happening, it seems, is a clear reformulation of the national narrative.
In a highly militarized country in a militarized region of a militarized world it was also striking that the Church felt it would welcome help in deepening an appreciation for and skills of nonviolence. The theory is clear enough, they seemed to say, but practice is still needed because when confronted with the need to exercise the skill it is hard.
The Patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church SB Gregorios III (head of one of the seven Catholic Confessions, all obedient to Rome but with original eastern roots, in Egypt and the Middle East), was perhaps the most optimistic and enthusiastic of everyone we met. He said the Revolution is a reaction of one people, human beings all, not a collection of sectarian communities. It is a response to everyone’s suffering. It is a recognition (again the metanoia) that the people as a whole have been responsible for their troubles, not just Mubarak. He knows he has been labeled an apologist for Mubarak but he says that the point is that while Mubarak is guilty and should be held accountable for his crimes, everyone must adopt a new vision for the future of Egypt, an Egypt in which all are called “to be with and for the other.” He warned that to encounter Islam with an accusation that it is a fundamentalist religion is wrong, a fundamentally dishonest approach. Islam is “something else” than Christianity but it has much in common including a hunger to share that which is common with one another.
He was also clear and explicit that even by being in Egypt, Europeans, and Westerners in general, face a crucial risk of distracting ourselves with our interest in the Revolution from what is really the root problem, peace between Israel and Palestine. ‘If Americans and Europeans are interested in securing a peaceful future for Christians, and people in the Middle East, they must resolve the Israel/Palestine issue. It is as much a threat to Muslims as it is to Christians when Christians leave the region. They have long lived together and learned from one another. It is a great loss to all concerned. And it is a threat to the rest of the world because Christians serve as a link to the Muslim World. Also, the Jews are the people now imprisoned in the region. Most Arabs can come and go more easily. The Jews are walling themselves in, not walling others out.’
Metanoia comes with no ritual of absolution beyond the change of heart that is necessary for a new vision to guide the future. Being open to accepting a recognition of complicity in the injustice in the world is the first step of practice in creating the beloved community. The Egyptians have clearly begun the journey and their invitation to us is to do nothing but watch in admiration.
NEW FORMS – A CONTINUING SEARCH – EGYPT PART III
Tahrir Square in Cairo has a raw worn look today, not as hospitable as two years ago when a small group of activists from around the world practiced their own occupation and celebrated New Year’s Eve with a candlelight service. Some side streets are closed off by large stone block barriers creating cul-de-sacs in which police or army could collect demonstrators. Small camera crews from BBC conduct interviews, and one US couple living just off the square warn that foreigners with cameras risk arrest and labels as provocateurs of foreign interests. They have become more cautious of their movement through the square.
This year’s New Year’s brought the veterans of a year of Revolution together in a people’s celebration which also included candles and celebrities and solidarity across sectarian divides and histories.
For the establishment periodical, Al Ahram, it was a front page color photograph again this year. Day by day however, the Square holds only a small remnant of occupation; characterized by the core organizers as “lost boys”, and prayer rallies by Islamicists. The organizing core is looking for the next step, new forms.
Esraa Abdel Fatah described the young organizer’s skepticism with an unfolding dynamic still largely controlled by the Army (SCAF). But even as the rules changed for the election, even if a Parliament was being formed before a new Constitution was drafted, even if a new President would be elected in an illogical order, they were still developing techniques to train large numbers of people all across Egypt in the principles of electoral politics. They used a cascade model of training focusing on the family, “ibdin l’alali”, it starts with the family. With only fifteen staff they recruit and train 20 people and each of them trains 20 more and each of them 20 more until 1000s go to the polls better informed about the choices they make. They worked in six branches around the country training 1000s in each branch to print handbills, digest news for internet and radio, even consider running for the Parliament. No they are in a discourse to decide on the “one scenario” to roll out on January 25th when “everyone” will be back in Tahrir at least for a day to celebrate the elections and, they hope, the surrender of power by the SCAF (and yes they are realistic enough to know that that is probably a dream – but so was the revolution).
Dr. Mohammad Aboughar has been a lifelong activist and figured he would always be on the periphery, pushing back first on Nasser, then Sadat and then Mubarak. As a member of the faculty in a medical school he studied the way corruption invaded every facet of life to bind intelligent and good people to the bureaucracy. After the Revolution his daughter challenged him to move from the periphery into the action. He helped to found the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, one of dozens of new parties which were then strategically consolidated into coalitions of a few dozen parties each to ensure some success in the election. The tactic has resulted in as many as 40 seats in the new 510 member Parliament. The majority of seats will be held by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists, but the Brotherhood will have to collect some of the minority parties into a coalition in order to have an absolute majority.
For the moment Aboughar says the focus will be on domestic issues, especially social economic structures. Somehow they must shine a light into the dark hole of the military budget and structure. A process of privatizing corporate forms that are controlled by the military will have to be devised. One day Egypt may have a larger part to play in regional politics again, but for the moment the guess is that treaties and agreements will remain in place. He will be in Tahrir on the 25th to celebrate the progress today, knowing that much hard work is still to come.
Salah Gouda is an economist who works with the National Center for Economic Studies. He clearly locates and celebrates the Revolution, as a government employee, seeing it as a public rejection of the corruption concentrated in the family and staff of former President Mubarak. He feels he now has the opportunity to do the job for which he was trained, to do research to strengthen the national economy.
The challenges are many, but two are clear and present dangers to the final success of the Revolution. The first is to resolve the problem of inefficiency and productivity. Currently 40% of Egypt’s population is under 18 years of age and should generally be involved in educational pursuits. Of the remaining 51 million Egyptians only 43% or 22 million are employed. Of those, 7 million, or one third of all employed Egyptians work for the government and they generally work no more than one to three hours per day. One way of reading this is to say that Egypt has an effective unemployment rate of 78%.
The second problem is equal to the first in importance and difficulty. How do the Egyptian people choose, from among 16 presidential candidates in the coming election, the individual with the best plan and prospects of impacting the economic realities of Egypt? The proposal of the National Center for Economic Studies is to host a forum inviting each candidate to present their economic agenda.
It was clear, in many of our conversations, that the practice of devising creative forms for uncovering core problems and their solutions is a new phenomenon for most Egyptians. And it was clear that the sense of urgency is not lost on those who are now search for those forms. There is a strong sense of confidence that the Egyptian people have the capacity to solve their problems, all things being equal. But there is also a deeply rooted appreciation that all things are not equal, and the future will be difficult. What we can offer is, first of all, what we took in twelve attentive hearts and minds, a prayerful will to solidarity with the struggle and a celebration of the success of the revolution. May January 25th bring all Egyptians together in a peaceful, promising gathering of hope.
A FINE HOWDY-DO – a Rosh Pinna Welcome – Israel Part I
I have been to Israel and Palestine a half dozen times in the last ten years, often for a month or more at a time, and have visited from the deep Negev to the Galilee, but never before the Northern Galilee (with the exception of one afternoon visit to Capernaum and the Golan in 2005). So this visit into the heart of the Northern Galilee and to the site of the birth of Kabbalahism and earliest settlements of Zionism was an education.
Rosh Pinna is a divine little village of homes, bed and breakfast sites, and coffee shops interwoven with a living museum. It was a village adopted by Baron Rothchild to plant the possibility of a silk industry in Palestine as a way of attracting European Jews to move to the Galilee as part of the Zionist project to resettle in the land of ancient Israel. There were only two problems, malaria, and the collapse of the silk industry with the development of rayon – the later problem lending to the out-migration of many from The Lebanon to the West during the same period.
You can see Lebanon, where I lived for six years as part of my term of alternative service during the Vietnam War, just to the left of Mt. Hermon which floated, snow cap in the lens of the a “spymaster” viewing glass in a small memorial park to a resident of Rosh Pinna who was killed during the second Lebanon War.
Rosh Pinna has also been contributing its residents to the wars of Israel since its founding as an outpost of Zionism, including Gideon Mer, who is celebrated for his contributions to finally concurring the threat of malaria by selfless research using himself as a guinea pig to understand the disease and develop treatments. Mer did have to suspend his work for a while to hold off “the marauding Arabs” during the 1929 Arab riots. Every school child in Israel visit Rosh Pinna at some point, to learn of the conquest of malaria, the contribution of the Galilee villages to the Zionist project, and the marauding Arab rioters.
Rosh Pinna streets are dotted with art galleries including one where I was party to a conversation that went as follows between the artist and his spouse with two visiting patrons from the United States:
He: A beautiful day. At least no one is shooting at us…yet.
She: But we are ready…we were born ready.
From Rosh Pinna it is a short ride down into the valley again for a visit to the Dubrovin Farm and the National Nature Preserve at Agamon Hulah Lake.
The Dubrovin Farm might be considered the Pilgrim site of Plymouth Rock, except for the discovery of the remains of a Synagogue from the 400s which suggest that there had been a Jewish settlement on the site before. The farm was a settlement developed by Yoav Dubrovin and family in 1904 when they migrated from Russia. They were preceded to the area by other immigrants from Russia in the 1880s, again as part of the Zionist settlement project. The Dubrovin’s were Christian converts to Judaism. Like everyone in the Hulah Valley in those days, malaria took a devastating toll and the agricultural project was especially challenging. Like the Pilgrims in Massachusetts Colony, the family would not have survived the early years of the settlement, the display says, but for the generosity of the Arabs who shared food and water with them. But the display goes on to tell us that the generosity was actually only a ruse of the “savage Arabs” who would then rob them of their animals and produce.
I spent the rest of the afternoon, on a beautiful sunny day, in the great bird sanctuary of Hulah Lake which is home to over 500 million migrating birds each year including an enormous grey crane population which is in residence for the winter. They tell the story of a flyway along the Afro-Syrian Rift that predates all of human history. A continuing open passage for interspecies hospitality and generosity.
IF WE HAD TO GO TO BED WITH OUR CONSCIENCE WE COULD NOT SLEEP – Israel Part II
The next day I made my way to Safad (Tzafat) which became one of the havens for the Jews expelled from Spain at the end of the Andulusian period. It was a place that grew to preserve the cosmopolitanism and the spiritual depth of the Jewish people when they were forced to flee from Spain in 1492. The Synagogue and the ancient Torah scrolls they hold are national treasurers and Safad has, therefore, been a popular place for settlement in the years following the founding of the State of Israel as well. It is larger than Jerusalem in land area and has a mixture of artists and summer mountain homes that continue its cosmopolitan history. The street of shops that extend from the General Mosque which has been converted into an art gallery, through the old city which is full of boutiques and galleries.
Safad also houses a new medical faculty and is one of the locations where Ethiopian immigrants are assimilated through language training and citizenship preparation. These last two elements of the city, however, are also a source of tensions. The Chief Rabbi of Safad has recently been reprimanded for issuing instructions that no Jewish landlord should rent an apartment to any Arab Israeli who might be seeking a place to stay while studying at the medical facility. The enmity generated by this stance has also led to the burning of Arab Israeli cars and attacks on them. The Ethiopians are an underclass in Israel and are desperate for work which makes them subject to day-labor practices of hire at less than minimum wage and without other benefits. It is a practice familiar to those of us who live in Rockland County and all across America where immigrant populations of Latinos, in particular, have moved into “day labor” situations.
But we also know that such sentiments seldom represent the views of the majority, even within the community most identified with the abusive behavior, and Safad is no exception. It was one of those events of synchronicity and serendipity when I stumbled upon the Khan of the White Donkey.
This is a recent community center, the result of the vision and generosity of former Nyack, New York resident Moshe Tov Krebs. In this renovated caravanseri a program than ranges from a weekly blues night, and stage for open mic activities, evenings of cultural dining and entertainment, and a weekly clinic of alternative medicine brings together those from all segments of the community from Orthodox Hassidim to secular ex-patriots from around the world, and from Arab Israeli residents and visiting tourists to an experiment as cosmopolitan as Spain may have been during the Andalusian era. I had a long visit with Maxim, the Khan Manager, who told me some of the stories of Safad and its intolerance and the role of the Khan as an antidote to that burden. It was Maxim who reflected that “if we had to go to bed with our conscience we could not sleep,” unless we found ways to offer another path.
I didn’t meet Moshe Tov Krebs, but he emailed me the next day to invite me back when I next returned to the area and said he had spent the day, after learning about my visit, regaling staff and others about his days at Shadowcliff as a youth and his ride in a caravan of cars from Nyack to Washington D.C. in 1963 to hear Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. give his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln memorial. That helped me understand the Khan of the White Donkey more clearly.
THIS IS SORT OF ABOUT THAT – The Rhinosceri – Israel Part III
The bus ride to Jerusalem from Rosh Pinna is a beautiful rollercoaster of a drive down into the Galilee Valley along the Sea to Tiberius and then back over the Judean Hills through Afula to Jerusalem. It is a bit like riding a troop transit, however, and a bit unsettling when most passengers on the bus are teen agers in khaki with their hands on the trigger of Uzis. Teenagers with guns have never made we feel comfortable or safe. But perhaps the real contrast was that in most cases the other hand held an Apple IPhone or its equivalent and either earplugs filled their ears with music or their free hand showed the dexterity of text-messagers everywhere. The young man in the back row with me finally got up the courage to open a brief conversation about my visit by asking me if a particular prepositional phrase was in its correct form in a lesson he was doing. He was a French-Israeli and we talked a bit about what a pacifist might think of a bus full of gun bearing youngsters and what place pacifism had in a country where someone can slip into a Settlement in the West Bank at night and murder a family including its small children. He was not in uniform but he lifted his polo shirt to show he did have a pistol tucked in to his belt in the back and showed the ticket man in Afula his military ID to justify the $3 ticket he had for the three hour ride from Metullah to Jerusalem. He had been on duty in Itamar at the time of the killings he referenced. He said he just couldn’t get his head around the idea of pacifism. They were two different worlds, he said, and they just didn’t mesh. Then he apologized that he needed to return to his studies. Not too much later he looked somewhat quizzically at me again and showed me the assignment he was reading; Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s 1961 short story, Harrison Bergeron, which begins: “THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way.” “This is sort of about that,” he said.
Satire and literature of the absurd seem to speak with special poignancy to Israelis (much like classical poetry seems to speak the mind of many Iranians – perhaps Westerns and their morphing into comic book vengeance memes in the United States (I watched Cowboy Aliens on the flight home)). Of particular moment was the reference to “rhinosceri” as a term to characterize what the US Occupy Movement has called the 1%. But “rhinosceri” breakout of a 99%-1% imbalance to recognize that the control of the political agenda and the control of capital by the 1% is dependent on the complicity of a much larger portion of the population which either endorses the narrative of inequity (hard work, risk taking, reward for character) or is simply lives in willful ignorance in order to avoid the obligations for action and responsibility. The Rhinosceros was a play by Eugene Ionesco written in the late 1950s and produced in various forms through the 1970s. It is available as a film starring Zero Mostel, Billy Wilder and Karen Black. It is a thinly disguised fable of the rise of fascism and the path of conformity leading to brutal, beastial social and political climates. As I asked about the occupations of city squares and medians through Israel over the course of the summer I found that rhinosceri had become a new meme of critique of Israeli leadership. I’ve seen nothing in the US press on this and only a few references in Israeli media. http://www.forward.com/articles/135287/
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Jerusalem is an intimate city in which the occasional visitor is never quite sure just where he is culturally, with the exception of standing in front of the Wailing Wall or in the Al Aqsa Mosque. In some ways the city has re-energized since the second intifada which had the effect of largely shutting it down.
All of the shops in the old city seem to be occupied and stocked today, and with the light rail recently opened a significant swath of the city is accessible and observable in new ways from Mount Hertzl to Beit Hanina. I was interested in evidence of Israel’s summer of “occupy like encampments” but a day of heavy rain and the more general onset of winter had pretty much washed it away. There is just a small encampment left near the Knesset in Jerusalem and in other cities the remnant is largely the homeless, not unlike in Cairo and some of the American sites. But the conversation is still alive.
Everywhere there is the sense that the people’s voice has been raised and the powers that be could not ignore it. Everywhere there is a realization that the events of 2011 will not be sufficient to create radical change; but the possibility is now real. Everywhere there is a certain lack of confidence in the next steps but a sense of creative energy and certainty that they will be found. And everywhere there are cracks in the foundation of the establishment and the status quo that vibrate and whistle as the winds of winter blow through them.
I have been blessed to know and support the professional development of a number of young adults during my years with the YMCA in working in Israel/Palestine. Two in particular are now pursuing their third professional degrees, holding down jobs and wrestling with what is means to be Palestinian Israeli Christians at a time when Israeli politics are dominated by a conservative agenda and supported by a powerfully assertive militarism. For most of their thirty some years they lived in homes that believed in the idealized project of an Israel that would harbor its Arab residents who roots were many centuries deep as equal citizens. They no longer believe this and have mounting evidence that their parents do not either. They have both said to me that if you believed that Israel would grow to be a democratic state that respected the human rights of all you are very disillusioned by current events. But they also have said that if you believe an awakening to the right and responsibility to struggle for your rights is a good thing, then you have to been encouraged by recent events. And the fact that their cousins (sometimes literally as well as figuratively) are more and more visible and provocative in their use of nonviolent methods to advance their human rights and interests in the West Bank and Gaza, is a growing source of pride for them as well. This is, to my mind, a profound emerging convergence of a people who have seen their interests as separate and defined by their citizenship and residency in the past. That is less true today.
The last two times I have left Israel, through Tel Aviv, I have gone in the company of a different woman who was leaving on the same flight as I and with whom I had started a conversation in the taxi on the way to the airport. In both cases I was given a perfunctory inquiry about bags and destination and sent off the gate without incident. In both cases the woman was pulled aside, her bags unpacked of everything, then escorted into an interrogation room, searched and questioned by four or five female agents. One of the women was living in Israel with her husband who was a Fulbright Fellow. The other was a graduate student on a program from a Washington D.C. university who had never been to Israel before and had been there for only two weeks. In each case the episode began with the question, “your last name, where is that from?” In both cases the last name was of Middle Eastern origin. There was no derivable explanation for the search beyond that attribute. And frankly I know of no woman leaving Israel with that attribute for whom this experience has not been true.
As I talked with my Jewish hosts in the Galilee, about the summer’s events in cities throughout the country, the tensions in Safad, the narrative of the historic sites as they referenced the Arab population of the 18th and 19th centuries, the surfacing investigation of Avigdor Lieberman, the talk of expanding the wall along the Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian borders, the militarized nature of society, the experience of visitors coming and going who have names of Middle Eastern origin, they spontaneously said that when you live out the role of the occupier, you create the environment of corruption and abuse of human rights and indignity which plagues Israel today and you corrupt the potential for reconciliation with the other who lives in your midst and across the valley and hill as your neighbor, or anywhere in the world as your ally.
AN EPILOGUE
Let’s begin near the end of the journey. Seven hours late in arriving in Cairo, the FOR Friends who were to meet me have returned home and left a digital message of their address and the invitation to make my way to their apartment just off Tahrir Square by taxi – a one hour, $15 ride into the wide-awake city of Cairo at close to midnight. Their street, Mustapha Abou Heif, is a mystery name to the vendor on the corner, four young men on the door stoop of the building that later proves to be next door to theirs, a vendor midblock actually in a street level shop of their building. Only the clear street sign on one corner in English and Arabic gives us any confidence that this is the correct street. “Us” includes the taxi driver, Tamer, who refuses to release me and my luggage until he is satisfied we have arrived at the correct building. The buildings marked 10 and 20 are clearly marked but are not residential entrances. There are no 12, 14, 16 or 18 facing Mustapha Abou Hief. No. 12 most importantly. This is the address I need, fifteen days into this trip and one night away from the flight home. More inquiry finally suggests that a mid-block alley, between the two buildings marked 10 and 20, partly blocked by a motorcycle and large wooden cartons might be my goal. There are two entries ways, no numbers, no listed occupants, one open to the elements with an antique elevator on the first landing. The other, a large blue door, is locked. As the most likely candidate (there is a light on one balcony four floors up), we knock. No answer.
Persuaded in my own mind that I must be close, I decide I’ll camp in the ally, trusting the couple I’ve never met will come or go, or someone who knows them will enter the alley. I insist Tamer be off and so we retrieve my bag from the taxi, trying one more time a suggested telephone number which still produces no answer. Tamer walks away with a wave and a warm shy smile. Returning to the alley, the blue door now stands open.
On the landing, in what might be a mop closet, is an older Egyptian in traditional garb (gallabiah, kafia) who responds to my query regarding an America with the response that there is a tall one who lives up these stairs and he will go check. He returns saying Drew does not recognize my business card. He then tilts his head slightly, points at his own cheek, and asks “black” “asfur”?” “like me”? Having just seen a Facebook photo I say yes and he takes me to the other door and says “fifth floor, on the right.” I know just enough Arabic to recognize the directions. And climbing the stairs with luggage in tow, I knock on the door on the right, at 11:30 at night, to have it opened by Paul Pierce and Kathy Kamphoefner http://www.amideast.org/abroad/programs/egypt/semester-academic-year-cairo-egypt/academic-staff.
In three hours of conversation on what will be too short a visit, I trace Paul and Kathy’s FOR history back to Manchester College and Ken Brown and family. We note Paul’s service as a member of the National Council. I hear about their five years in Hebron with CPT, ELCA, and EAPPI, their four years in Beijing until the SARS epidemic broke out, and their four years in Cairo where Kathy works now with AMIDEAST and Paul, rehabilitating from being hit by a taxi and breaking and arm and a leg, lives in a quasi retired state. Kathy is recently back from nine months in South Sudan (when AMIDEAST Students canceled their 2011 programs in light of the Revolution she took an assignment there). They have also been working with refugees from a variety of countries in Africa, offer training in nonviolence, and write occasionally on the Revolution. We determine that they were in this very apartment two years ago when an FOR Satyagraha contingent joined the Gaza Freedom March, but have guarded their engagement with such acts because of the risks they pose to resident ex-patriots. On the one hand they live carefully as non-nationals with a weary respect for the secret service, but on the other they live in complete confidence in the warmth and delight of the Egyptian people and their prospects for successfully building on the Revolution.
Mark C. Johnson
January 18, 2012. February 3, 2012.
REPORT ON IFOR DELEGATION TO EUROPE JANUARY 2012 AND EXTENDED VISIT TO ISRAEL/PALESTINE.
HOPE AGAINST HOPE – EGYPT PART I
Two years ago we joined 1200 people from 40 nations to seek access to Gaza through the Raffah Gate on the Sinai on the anniversary of the Gaza War to stand in solidarity with Palestinians in protest of the horrors of occupation. Access was denied to the majority of us and the future looked hopeless.
Today that gate is open and goods are flowing to support construction and development in Gaza. And Egypt is a very different place. Yet the situation is, in many ways, more desperate and the reliance on hope in an uncertain future more intense.
Our delegation of twelve (eleven Europeans and myself, representing five branches of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation), met with a dozen organizations over a six day period ranging from senior Confessional leaders, to political and governmental representatives, and including a range of NGO and academic groups. Without exception they were energized and proud of what the Egyptian people have accomplished in overthrowing an autocratic bureaucracy and beginning an open journey to an alternative future. And also without exception they were anxious and concerned about what shape that future would finally take. They all agreed, almost no one would have predicted the success of the Revolution in 2011, and no one is confident that they know or can predict the outcomes of 2012.
The biggest concern is the continuing control of the Army (the SCAF) which is viewed as threatened and therefore dangerous, corrupt, pervasive, duplicitous, resistant to change, and yet in the end reducible to civilian control under continuing pressure of the Egyptian people. One long time dissident noted that in militarized dictatorships the army always hates civilian leadership and the transition to civilian control and leadership is fraught with danger. Another life-long dissident and one of the founders of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party spoke rather to the questionable competence of the SCAF referencing interminable meetings reaching few conclusions.
Organizer and blogger, Egypt’s “Facebook Girl” Esraa Abdel Fatah, at the Egyptian Democratic Academy (www.egyda.org), agreed that while the SCAF is undependable – changing rules to suit its needs – the extended election process being an illustration – the changes worked in favor of their organizing strategy of a cascade model of grassroots leadership training from village to village across Egypt.
There was also very general agreement that the secret service, while operating without a name or public identity, is accountable to the SCAF and more active than ever. Its reach apparently extends outside of Egypt, tracing one participant in an IFOR event to foreign shores. It is particularly attentive to foreign visitors and residents which is seen as a residual intent to blame outside forces for the Revolution. Some ex-patriot residents are more careful now about their movements and engagements than before the Revolution.
The next biggest concern is for the nature of pluralism in post-Revolutionary Egypt, especially at the Confessional level. The Christian minority is still substantial enough, and diverse enough in its own right, to bear most of the burden of this concern. But “secular” and moderate Muslims also voiced concerns about the potential issue of greater influence on social conventions and personal status freedoms from the Salafists, a very conservative Wahhabist strain of Islam with strong links to Saudi Arabia.
Most people we spoke to saw the Muslim Brotherhood as a long-struggling, patient, conservative but responsible religious and political presence which has earned a right to take leadership in the new Egypt. While not completely confident, most believe the Muslim Brotherhood will be the Parliamentary contingent that ensures the new Constitution preserves the first four articles of the 1971 Constitution which protect much of the personal liberties of the various Confessions that make up Egypt’s social fabric. They expect initial Constitutional changes to focus on limiting the power of the President moving forward.
There is a clear courtship of sectarian leadership, grounded in historic interfaith dialogue practices, which is testing the strength of their shared ties during the period of transition. The Melkite-Greek Catholic Patriachate, SB Gregorios III, for example, who could have been in his offices in any number of countries which come under his See, from Egypt to Turkey (Alexandria to Antioche and including Jerusalem), met with us for an hour prior to an appointment with the Grand Mufti Ali Gomar at Al Azhar. The Patriarch, who spoke in fluent German, is in his late 70s and of Lebanese-Syrian heritage, showed more flexibility and vision than some of his younger colleagues we met, one of whom characterized Islam as an ideology inhospitable to democracy, rather than a religion. This was but one of a number of examples of differences of opinion within faith communities which were sometimes greater than apparent differences between faith communities. Younger Coptic priests, for example, were quicker to join the Revolution than their seniors, and significant numbers of Muslims find the Salafists refusal to engage in dialogue problematic if not repugnant.
The third major concern, and the globally common ticking time-bomb is the problem of poverty. Embedded in a severely corrupt economic system, an educational system which leaves more than 30% of the population illiterate, a demographic distortion of a huge unemployed youth population, and an infrastructure worn frayed if it ever were firm, the urgency of issues worry everyone. We have and will continue to see evidence of concern over subsidized prices for food, fuel, and fundamental services toppling short-term governments in Egypt and all across Africa in the news every day. Today is it Nigeria or Southern Sudan, tomorrow it could be Egypt which erupts in anger and frustration.
But the source of hope, in the face of such trials, is the triumph of the nonviolence in Tahrir Square last January and the recently completed Parliamentary elections in which 70% of the electorate voted. Social Scientist and founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center, Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, (http://www.cartercenter.org/peace/human_rights/defenders/defenders/Egypt_saad_eddin_ibrahim.html) noted that the rate of participation challenges the proposition that universal literacy is required for democratic processes to work.
Esraa Abdel Fatah and her colleagues Salem Tarek and Yuweida were the first of many we met to voice the belief that today the people believe they were and will be heard and that is the democratizing force which gives them hope and confidence that Egypt will successfully transform itself to a transparent and free society. It is an expectation that may take many years, even a succession of Parliamentary elections. There seems to be an inherent understanding that the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.
Our delegation host, Magdy Garas, head of Caritas – Egypt, could also point with justifiable pride to the work of this charitable NGO with street children, with mothers and their babies in neo-natal clinics, and with preschoolers in five cities across Egypt, to the capacity of Egyptians to address their situation creatively and compassionate. And Samy Nashad, in his 25th year as National Executive of the Egyptian YMCA could point to their branches in 25 cities across Egypt as one more place where rising leadership received their early training in community development demonstrating a fully available a proficient Egyptian capacity to succeed.
“OUR METANOIA” – EGYPT PART II
The metaphor of spring as an awakening is certainly not lost on the Arab world, harking back as it does to early 20th century efforts to throw off the yoke of colonialism. The family of terms that would include intifada and jihad also blend with the expression of metanoia (repentance, transformation of the heart) now voiced by some Christian clerics who in a guilt tinged tone affirm that they have been complicit in reign of Mubarak, preferring the devil they knew to the responsibility they had to truth and justice.
Members of our delegation who come out of a more deeply reflective Christian framework than many in the West (either from a secular Europe or the failed Protestant experiment of North America), were surprised that for the first time in decades of visits the public voice of the Church was ready to affirm its shared responsibility for the conditions of the Egyptian poor.
Confessional spokespersons were ready to entertain the possibility that attacks on Christians were as likely to be directed by the government (i.e. SCAF) to sow dissension as they were to be acts of bigotry by otherwise historically friendly Muslim neighbors. And Muslims shared similar suspicions that confrontations between the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists might be blowback from Mubarak’s attempts to contain the rising power of the Brotherhood (which he and Sadat and Nasser before him tolerated as an exemplary opposition) with the addition of a Saudi nurtured Salafist undercurrent. (Shades of the history of the Taliban and Hamas as initial creations of colonial powers to prop themselves up by introducing threats of their own construction.)
The petard of migration is falsely used, according to the Christians we talked to (!), to suggest an issue of loyalty which has no religious basis. It is true that out-migration has accelerated over the past year, but this is as true for Muslims as for Christians, and points to economic conditions rather than new threats of discrimination and persecution according to Christians and Muslims alike. It is easy for Christians in particular to slip into anecdote after anecdote of rising conservatism, but those can be part of comfortable conversations with Muslim friends just as easily as with fellow Christians. It is a concern that they share, not that separates them. Like virtually every issue we raised, this one became more interesting and complicated the more we talked about it. What is happening, it seems, is a clear reformulation of the national narrative.
In a highly militarized country in a militarized region of a militarized world it was also striking that the Church felt it would welcome help in deepening an appreciation for and skills of nonviolence. The theory is clear enough, they seemed to say, but practice is still needed because when confronted with the need to exercise the skill it is hard.
The Patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church SB Gregorios III (head of one of the seven Catholic Confessions, all obedient to Rome but with original eastern roots, in Egypt and the Middle East), was perhaps the most optimistic and enthusiastic of everyone we met. He said the Revolution is a reaction of one people, human beings all, not a collection of sectarian communities. It is a response to everyone’s suffering. It is a recognition (again the metanoia) that the people as a whole have been responsible for their troubles, not just Mubarak. He knows he has been labeled an apologist for Mubarak but he says that the point is that while Mubarak is guilty and should be held accountable for his crimes, everyone must adopt a new vision for the future of Egypt, an Egypt in which all are called “to be with and for the other.” He warned that to encounter Islam with an accusation that it is a fundamentalist religion is wrong, a fundamentally dishonest approach. Islam is “something else” than Christianity but it has much in common including a hunger to share that which is common with one another.
He was also clear and explicit that even by being in Egypt, Europeans, and Westerners in general, face a crucial risk of distracting ourselves with our interest in the Revolution from what is really the root problem, peace between Israel and Palestine. ‘If Americans and Europeans are interested in securing a peaceful future for Christians, and people in the Middle East, they must resolve the Israel/Palestine issue. It is as much a threat to Muslims as it is to Christians when Christians leave the region. They have long lived together and learned from one another. It is a great loss to all concerned. And it is a threat to the rest of the world because Christians serve as a link to the Muslim World. Also, the Jews are the people now imprisoned in the region. Most Arabs can come and go more easily. The Jews are walling themselves in, not walling others out.’
Metanoia comes with no ritual of absolution beyond the change of heart that is necessary for a new vision to guide the future. Being open to accepting a recognition of complicity in the injustice in the world is the first step of practice in creating the beloved community. The Egyptians have clearly begun the journey and their invitation to us is to do nothing but watch in admiration.
NEW FORMS – A CONTINUING SEARCH – EGYPT PART III
Tahrir Square in Cairo has a raw worn look today, not as hospitable as two years ago when a small group of activists from around the world practiced their own occupation and celebrated New Year’s Eve with a candlelight service. Some side streets are closed off by large stone block barriers creating cul-de-sacs in which police or army could collect demonstrators. Small camera crews from BBC conduct interviews, and one US couple living just off the square warn that foreigners with cameras risk arrest and labels as provocateurs of foreign interests. They have become more cautious of their movement through the square.
This year’s New Year’s brought the veterans of a year of Revolution together in a people’s celebration which also included candles and celebrities and solidarity across sectarian divides and histories.
For the establishment periodical, Al Ahram, it was a front page color photograph again this year. Day by day however, the Square holds only a small remnant of occupation; characterized by the core organizers as “lost boys”, and prayer rallies by Islamicists. The organizing core is looking for the next step, new forms.
Esraa Abdel Fatah described the young organizer’s skepticism with an unfolding dynamic still largely controlled by the Army (SCAF). But even as the rules changed for the election, even if a Parliament was being formed before a new Constitution was drafted, even if a new President would be elected in an illogical order, they were still developing techniques to train large numbers of people all across Egypt in the principles of electoral politics. They used a cascade model of training focusing on the family, “ibdin l’alali”, it starts with the family. With only fifteen staff they recruit and train 20 people and each of them trains 20 more and each of them 20 more until 1000s go to the polls better informed about the choices they make. They worked in six branches around the country training 1000s in each branch to print handbills, digest news for internet and radio, even consider running for the Parliament. No they are in a discourse to decide on the “one scenario” to roll out on January 25th when “everyone” will be back in Tahrir at least for a day to celebrate the elections and, they hope, the surrender of power by the SCAF (and yes they are realistic enough to know that that is probably a dream – but so was the revolution).
Dr. Mohammad Aboughar has been a lifelong activist and figured he would always be on the periphery, pushing back first on Nasser, then Sadat and then Mubarak. As a member of the faculty in a medical school he studied the way corruption invaded every facet of life to bind intelligent and good people to the bureaucracy. After the Revolution his daughter challenged him to move from the periphery into the action. He helped to found the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, one of dozens of new parties which were then strategically consolidated into coalitions of a few dozen parties each to ensure some success in the election. The tactic has resulted in as many as 40 seats in the new 510 member Parliament. The majority of seats will be held by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists, but the Brotherhood will have to collect some of the minority parties into a coalition in order to have an absolute majority.
For the moment Aboughar says the focus will be on domestic issues, especially social economic structures. Somehow they must shine a light into the dark hole of the military budget and structure. A process of privatizing corporate forms that are controlled by the military will have to be devised. One day Egypt may have a larger part to play in regional politics again, but for the moment the guess is that treaties and agreements will remain in place. He will be in Tahrir on the 25th to celebrate the progress today, knowing that much hard work is still to come.
Salah Gouda is an economist who works with the National Center for Economic Studies. He clearly locates and celebrates the Revolution, as a government employee, seeing it as a public rejection of the corruption concentrated in the family and staff of former President Mubarak. He feels he now has the opportunity to do the job for which he was trained, to do research to strengthen the national economy.
The challenges are many, but two are clear and present dangers to the final success of the Revolution. The first is to resolve the problem of inefficiency and productivity. Currently 40% of Egypt’s population is under 18 years of age and should generally be involved in educational pursuits. Of the remaining 51 million Egyptians only 43% or 22 million are employed. Of those, 7 million, or one third of all employed Egyptians work for the government and they generally work no more than one to three hours per day. One way of reading this is to say that Egypt has an effective unemployment rate of 78%.
The second problem is equal to the first in importance and difficulty. How do the Egyptian people choose, from among 16 presidential candidates in the coming election, the individual with the best plan and prospects of impacting the economic realities of Egypt? The proposal of the National Center for Economic Studies is to host a forum inviting each candidate to present their economic agenda.
It was clear, in many of our conversations, that the practice of devising creative forms for uncovering core problems and their solutions is a new phenomenon for most Egyptians. And it was clear that the sense of urgency is not lost on those who are now search for those forms. There is a strong sense of confidence that the Egyptian people have the capacity to solve their problems, all things being equal. But there is also a deeply rooted appreciation that all things are not equal, and the future will be difficult. What we can offer is, first of all, what we took in twelve attentive hearts and minds, a prayerful will to solidarity with the struggle and a celebration of the success of the revolution. May January 25th bring all Egyptians together in a peaceful, promising gathering of hope.
A FINE HOWDY-DO – a Rosh Pinna Welcome – Israel Part I
I have been to Israel and Palestine a half dozen times in the last ten years, often for a month or more at a time, and have visited from the deep Negev to the Galilee, but never before the Northern Galilee (with the exception of one afternoon visit to Capernaum and the Golan in 2005). So this visit into the heart of the Northern Galilee and to the site of the birth of Kabbalahism and earliest settlements of Zionism was an education.
Rosh Pinna is a divine little village of homes, bed and breakfast sites, and coffee shops interwoven with a living museum. It was a village adopted by Baron Rothchild to plant the possibility of a silk industry in Palestine as a way of attracting European Jews to move to the Galilee as part of the Zionist project to resettle in the land of ancient Israel. There were only two problems, malaria, and the collapse of the silk industry with the development of rayon – the later problem lending to the out-migration of many from The Lebanon to the West during the same period.
You can see Lebanon, where I lived for six years as part of my term of alternative service during the Vietnam War, just to the left of Mt. Hermon which floated, snow cap in the lens of the a “spymaster” viewing glass in a small memorial park to a resident of Rosh Pinna who was killed during the second Lebanon War.
Rosh Pinna has also been contributing its residents to the wars of Israel since its founding as an outpost of Zionism, including Gideon Mer, who is celebrated for his contributions to finally concurring the threat of malaria by selfless research using himself as a guinea pig to understand the disease and develop treatments. Mer did have to suspend his work for a while to hold off “the marauding Arabs” during the 1929 Arab riots. Every school child in Israel visit Rosh Pinna at some point, to learn of the conquest of malaria, the contribution of the Galilee villages to the Zionist project, and the marauding Arab rioters.
Rosh Pinna streets are dotted with art galleries including one where I was party to a conversation that went as follows between the artist and his spouse with two visiting patrons from the United States:
He: A beautiful day. At least no one is shooting at us…yet.
She: But we are ready…we were born ready.
From Rosh Pinna it is a short ride down into the valley again for a visit to the Dubrovin Farm and the National Nature Preserve at Agamon Hulah Lake.
The Dubrovin Farm might be considered the Pilgrim site of Plymouth Rock, except for the discovery of the remains of a Synagogue from the 400s which suggest that there had been a Jewish settlement on the site before. The farm was a settlement developed by Yoav Dubrovin and family in 1904 when they migrated from Russia. They were preceded to the area by other immigrants from Russia in the 1880s, again as part of the Zionist settlement project. The Dubrovin’s were Christian converts to Judaism. Like everyone in the Hulah Valley in those days, malaria took a devastating toll and the agricultural project was especially challenging. Like the Pilgrims in Massachusetts Colony, the family would not have survived the early years of the settlement, the display says, but for the generosity of the Arabs who shared food and water with them. But the display goes on to tell us that the generosity was actually only a ruse of the “savage Arabs” who would then rob them of their animals and produce.
I spent the rest of the afternoon, on a beautiful sunny day, in the great bird sanctuary of Hulah Lake which is home to over 500 million migrating birds each year including an enormous grey crane population which is in residence for the winter. They tell the story of a flyway along the Afro-Syrian Rift that predates all of human history. A continuing open passage for interspecies hospitality and generosity.
IF WE HAD TO GO TO BED WITH OUR CONSCIENCE WE COULD NOT SLEEP – Israel Part II
The next day I made my way to Safad (Tzafat) which became one of the havens for the Jews expelled from Spain at the end of the Andulusian period. It was a place that grew to preserve the cosmopolitanism and the spiritual depth of the Jewish people when they were forced to flee from Spain in 1492. The Synagogue and the ancient Torah scrolls they hold are national treasurers and Safad has, therefore, been a popular place for settlement in the years following the founding of the State of Israel as well. It is larger than Jerusalem in land area and has a mixture of artists and summer mountain homes that continue its cosmopolitan history. The street of shops that extend from the General Mosque which has been converted into an art gallery, through the old city which is full of boutiques and galleries.
Safad also houses a new medical faculty and is one of the locations where Ethiopian immigrants are assimilated through language training and citizenship preparation. These last two elements of the city, however, are also a source of tensions. The Chief Rabbi of Safad has recently been reprimanded for issuing instructions that no Jewish landlord should rent an apartment to any Arab Israeli who might be seeking a place to stay while studying at the medical facility. The enmity generated by this stance has also led to the burning of Arab Israeli cars and attacks on them. The Ethiopians are an underclass in Israel and are desperate for work which makes them subject to day-labor practices of hire at less than minimum wage and without other benefits. It is a practice familiar to those of us who live in Rockland County and all across America where immigrant populations of Latinos, in particular, have moved into “day labor” situations.
But we also know that such sentiments seldom represent the views of the majority, even within the community most identified with the abusive behavior, and Safad is no exception. It was one of those events of synchronicity and serendipity when I stumbled upon the Khan of the White Donkey.
This is a recent community center, the result of the vision and generosity of former Nyack, New York resident Moshe Tov Krebs. In this renovated caravanseri a program than ranges from a weekly blues night, and stage for open mic activities, evenings of cultural dining and entertainment, and a weekly clinic of alternative medicine brings together those from all segments of the community from Orthodox Hassidim to secular ex-patriots from around the world, and from Arab Israeli residents and visiting tourists to an experiment as cosmopolitan as Spain may have been during the Andalusian era. I had a long visit with Maxim, the Khan Manager, who told me some of the stories of Safad and its intolerance and the role of the Khan as an antidote to that burden. It was Maxim who reflected that “if we had to go to bed with our conscience we could not sleep,” unless we found ways to offer another path.
I didn’t meet Moshe Tov Krebs, but he emailed me the next day to invite me back when I next returned to the area and said he had spent the day, after learning about my visit, regaling staff and others about his days at Shadowcliff as a youth and his ride in a caravan of cars from Nyack to Washington D.C. in 1963 to hear Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. give his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln memorial. That helped me understand the Khan of the White Donkey more clearly.
THIS IS SORT OF ABOUT THAT – The Rhinosceri – Israel Part III
The bus ride to Jerusalem from Rosh Pinna is a beautiful rollercoaster of a drive down into the Galilee Valley along the Sea to Tiberius and then back over the Judean Hills through Afula to Jerusalem. It is a bit like riding a troop transit, however, and a bit unsettling when most passengers on the bus are teen agers in khaki with their hands on the trigger of Uzis. Teenagers with guns have never made we feel comfortable or safe. But perhaps the real contrast was that in most cases the other hand held an Apple IPhone or its equivalent and either earplugs filled their ears with music or their free hand showed the dexterity of text-messagers everywhere. The young man in the back row with me finally got up the courage to open a brief conversation about my visit by asking me if a particular prepositional phrase was in its correct form in a lesson he was doing. He was a French-Israeli and we talked a bit about what a pacifist might think of a bus full of gun bearing youngsters and what place pacifism had in a country where someone can slip into a Settlement in the West Bank at night and murder a family including its small children. He was not in uniform but he lifted his polo shirt to show he did have a pistol tucked in to his belt in the back and showed the ticket man in Afula his military ID to justify the $3 ticket he had for the three hour ride from Metullah to Jerusalem. He had been on duty in Itamar at the time of the killings he referenced. He said he just couldn’t get his head around the idea of pacifism. They were two different worlds, he said, and they just didn’t mesh. Then he apologized that he needed to return to his studies. Not too much later he looked somewhat quizzically at me again and showed me the assignment he was reading; Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s 1961 short story, Harrison Bergeron, which begins: “THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way.” “This is sort of about that,” he said.
Satire and literature of the absurd seem to speak with special poignancy to Israelis (much like classical poetry seems to speak the mind of many Iranians – perhaps Westerns and their morphing into comic book vengeance memes in the United States (I watched Cowboy Aliens on the flight home)). Of particular moment was the reference to “rhinosceri” as a term to characterize what the US Occupy Movement has called the 1%. But “rhinosceri” breakout of a 99%-1% imbalance to recognize that the control of the political agenda and the control of capital by the 1% is dependent on the complicity of a much larger portion of the population which either endorses the narrative of inequity (hard work, risk taking, reward for character) or is simply lives in willful ignorance in order to avoid the obligations for action and responsibility. The Rhinosceros was a play by Eugene Ionesco written in the late 1950s and produced in various forms through the 1970s. It is available as a film starring Zero Mostel, Billy Wilder and Karen Black. It is a thinly disguised fable of the rise of fascism and the path of conformity leading to brutal, beastial social and political climates. As I asked about the occupations of city squares and medians through Israel over the course of the summer I found that rhinosceri had become a new meme of critique of Israeli leadership. I’ve seen nothing in the US press on this and only a few references in Israeli media. http://www.forward.com/articles/135287/
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Jerusalem is an intimate city in which the occasional visitor is never quite sure just where he is culturally, with the exception of standing in front of the Wailing Wall or in the Al Aqsa Mosque. In some ways the city has re-energized since the second intifada which had the effect of largely shutting it down.
All of the shops in the old city seem to be occupied and stocked today, and with the light rail recently opened a significant swath of the city is accessible and observable in new ways from Mount Hertzl to Beit Hanina. I was interested in evidence of Israel’s summer of “occupy like encampments” but a day of heavy rain and the more general onset of winter had pretty much washed it away. There is just a small encampment left near the Knesset in Jerusalem and in other cities the remnant is largely the homeless, not unlike in Cairo and some of the American sites. But the conversation is still alive.
Everywhere there is the sense that the people’s voice has been raised and the powers that be could not ignore it. Everywhere there is a realization that the events of 2011 will not be sufficient to create radical change; but the possibility is now real. Everywhere there is a certain lack of confidence in the next steps but a sense of creative energy and certainty that they will be found. And everywhere there are cracks in the foundation of the establishment and the status quo that vibrate and whistle as the winds of winter blow through them.
I have been blessed to know and support the professional development of a number of young adults during my years with the YMCA in working in Israel/Palestine. Two in particular are now pursuing their third professional degrees, holding down jobs and wrestling with what is means to be Palestinian Israeli Christians at a time when Israeli politics are dominated by a conservative agenda and supported by a powerfully assertive militarism. For most of their thirty some years they lived in homes that believed in the idealized project of an Israel that would harbor its Arab residents who roots were many centuries deep as equal citizens. They no longer believe this and have mounting evidence that their parents do not either. They have both said to me that if you believed that Israel would grow to be a democratic state that respected the human rights of all you are very disillusioned by current events. But they also have said that if you believe an awakening to the right and responsibility to struggle for your rights is a good thing, then you have to been encouraged by recent events. And the fact that their cousins (sometimes literally as well as figuratively) are more and more visible and provocative in their use of nonviolent methods to advance their human rights and interests in the West Bank and Gaza, is a growing source of pride for them as well. This is, to my mind, a profound emerging convergence of a people who have seen their interests as separate and defined by their citizenship and residency in the past. That is less true today.
The last two times I have left Israel, through Tel Aviv, I have gone in the company of a different woman who was leaving on the same flight as I and with whom I had started a conversation in the taxi on the way to the airport. In both cases I was given a perfunctory inquiry about bags and destination and sent off the gate without incident. In both cases the woman was pulled aside, her bags unpacked of everything, then escorted into an interrogation room, searched and questioned by four or five female agents. One of the women was living in Israel with her husband who was a Fulbright Fellow. The other was a graduate student on a program from a Washington D.C. university who had never been to Israel before and had been there for only two weeks. In each case the episode began with the question, “your last name, where is that from?” In both cases the last name was of Middle Eastern origin. There was no derivable explanation for the search beyond that attribute. And frankly I know of no woman leaving Israel with that attribute for whom this experience has not been true.
As I talked with my Jewish hosts in the Galilee, about the summer’s events in cities throughout the country, the tensions in Safad, the narrative of the historic sites as they referenced the Arab population of the 18th and 19th centuries, the surfacing investigation of Avigdor Lieberman, the talk of expanding the wall along the Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian borders, the militarized nature of society, the experience of visitors coming and going who have names of Middle Eastern origin, they spontaneously said that when you live out the role of the occupier, you create the environment of corruption and abuse of human rights and indignity which plagues Israel today and you corrupt the potential for reconciliation with the other who lives in your midst and across the valley and hill as your neighbor, or anywhere in the world as your ally.
AN EPILOGUE
Let’s begin near the end of the journey. Seven hours late in arriving in Cairo, the FOR Friends who were to meet me have returned home and left a digital message of their address and the invitation to make my way to their apartment just off Tahrir Square by taxi – a one hour, $15 ride into the wide-awake city of Cairo at close to midnight. Their street, Mustapha Abou Heif, is a mystery name to the vendor on the corner, four young men on the door stoop of the building that later proves to be next door to theirs, a vendor midblock actually in a street level shop of their building. Only the clear street sign on one corner in English and Arabic gives us any confidence that this is the correct street. “Us” includes the taxi driver, Tamer, who refuses to release me and my luggage until he is satisfied we have arrived at the correct building. The buildings marked 10 and 20 are clearly marked but are not residential entrances. There are no 12, 14, 16 or 18 facing Mustapha Abou Hief. No. 12 most importantly. This is the address I need, fifteen days into this trip and one night away from the flight home. More inquiry finally suggests that a mid-block alley, between the two buildings marked 10 and 20, partly blocked by a motorcycle and large wooden cartons might be my goal. There are two entries ways, no numbers, no listed occupants, one open to the elements with an antique elevator on the first landing. The other, a large blue door, is locked. As the most likely candidate (there is a light on one balcony four floors up), we knock. No answer.
Persuaded in my own mind that I must be close, I decide I’ll camp in the ally, trusting the couple I’ve never met will come or go, or someone who knows them will enter the alley. I insist Tamer be off and so we retrieve my bag from the taxi, trying one more time a suggested telephone number which still produces no answer. Tamer walks away with a wave and a warm shy smile. Returning to the alley, the blue door now stands open.
On the landing, in what might be a mop closet, is an older Egyptian in traditional garb (gallabiah, kafia) who responds to my query regarding an America with the response that there is a tall one who lives up these stairs and he will go check. He returns saying Drew does not recognize my business card. He then tilts his head slightly, points at his own cheek, and asks “black” “asfur”?” “like me”? Having just seen a Facebook photo I say yes and he takes me to the other door and says “fifth floor, on the right.” I know just enough Arabic to recognize the directions. And climbing the stairs with luggage in tow, I knock on the door on the right, at 11:30 at night, to have it opened by Paul Pierce and Kathy Kamphoefner http://www.amideast.org/abroad/programs/egypt/semester-academic-year-cairo-egypt/academic-staff.
In three hours of conversation on what will be too short a visit, I trace Paul and Kathy’s FOR history back to Manchester College and Ken Brown and family. We note Paul’s service as a member of the National Council. I hear about their five years in Hebron with CPT, ELCA, and EAPPI, their four years in Beijing until the SARS epidemic broke out, and their four years in Cairo where Kathy works now with AMIDEAST and Paul, rehabilitating from being hit by a taxi and breaking and arm and a leg, lives in a quasi retired state. Kathy is recently back from nine months in South Sudan (when AMIDEAST Students canceled their 2011 programs in light of the Revolution she took an assignment there). They have also been working with refugees from a variety of countries in Africa, offer training in nonviolence, and write occasionally on the Revolution. We determine that they were in this very apartment two years ago when an FOR Satyagraha contingent joined the Gaza Freedom March, but have guarded their engagement with such acts because of the risks they pose to resident ex-patriots. On the one hand they live carefully as non-nationals with a weary respect for the secret service, but on the other they live in complete confidence in the warmth and delight of the Egyptian people and their prospects for successfully building on the Revolution.
Mark C. Johnson
January 18, 2012. February 3, 2012.
posted by Mark at 3:27 PM
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