Making Connections to Israel/Palestine

On Monday of last week I found myself doing simultaneous translation for the play “My Name is Rachel Corrie.” This play tells the story of the young 23-year-old Olympia, Washington native who was working for the International Solidarity Movement when an Israeli tractor bulldozed her down as she was trying to protect a Palestinian house from being demolished. At moments I became light headed and realized why: I was forgetting to breathe in the rush of trying to translate as much as I could for Paula. I would stop and take a deep breath and begin again. Despite all my efforts, I’m sure I only managed to translate about half of the dialogue and had to swallow back my tears a number of times when the content of what I was translating was heartbreaking in its injustice.

We were in Muhlenburg, PA and the local student organizer, Alex, was our host and director of the play. The Sunday afternoon matinee was a final dress rehearsal before the following two days of formal shows. About 20 people showed up for the performance, including students from a pro-Israel group on campus. After the show Invincible talked a bit about her work with the US-Palestine Youth Solidarity Network (youthsolidarity.net) and spit a few rhymes about the struggles going on in Israel/Palestine. There was time for questions at the end and some members of the audience challenged Invincible on her perspective of the violence carried out by Israeli state forces, specifically citing a recent case when 100 rockets had been launched from the occupied territories towards Israel. Invincible responded that it is not a question of numbers (although if one looks at the numbers, Palestinian lives have been overwhelmingly impacted and destroyed) but rather the fact that Palestinian non-violent resistance is met with violence from the Israeli military. There was some back and forth and then the folks from the pro-Israel group stood up and stormed out of the room. After a few moments of tense silence, we continued our discussion and debrief, thanked the actresses for putting on an excellent play that reflected the complexity of one young woman who took a stand for justice and got killed because of it. On the way to our next stop, we received a text from Alex that 60 the posters for the theater show had been taken down from event boards and that somebody had tampered with the set of the play the night before the first performance.

At Ithaca College, we met and shared a panel with a conscientious objector from Israel named Netta, who was visiting the states for three months. All young men and women in Israel are required to fulfill obligatory military service. Netta was refusenik. Her draft date was set for February 2009. She planned to refuse service in the Israel army which was fighting what she deemed a “stupid war.” At that point, the judge would sentence her to between 7 and 35 days of jail, which would be served in a jail on a military base. After her release, she would be given another draft date and go through the whole process all over again. This would continue as long as she choose to fight it and as long as the court system felt like putting up with her.

Netta’s story thrown into the mix made for a particularly powerful panel – a conscientious objector who faced jail in Israel, a conscientious objector resisting the risk of being recruited by three different armed groups in Colombia (the state forces, paramilitaries and guerrilla) and Isaac who had resisted the poverty draft in the US. The connections between their stories were clear: of course each conflict has its own particular quality and level of intensity, but fundamentally these are the same systems, the same wars and part of the same military industrial complex. When asked what to do by a member in the audience, I responded that our most important action is to be an ally to those facing these challenges in our own communities and abroad. Whether that means that you connect with a young person at risk of being recruited into the US army or support a veteran who has just returned from the war in Iraq, whether you write an email to a conscientious objector who is currently in jail in Israel or connect with youth resisting the armed conflict in Colombia – the point is to build personal and political relationships with folks both near and far. Through these relationships we will expand our network of youth and youth allies resisting militarism through creative action.