Jerusalem a go-go
Monday July 23rd
Yesterday was exceptionally uneventful. Sundays mean that we can not call embassys or etc, so we spent the day resending emails to all the organizations we had sent emails to and received no response from. I’m still not expecting much in terms of responses.
Salim, his wife and two daughters have all been away in Tiberius and only get back on Tuesday night, so when I got back from my sister’s house on Sat night, I was picked up by Rasim, Ashraf and two other cousin’s. We went on a mad run around town picking up assorted bits of food to make a meal, and then they went out for hours to a birthday party and came back at like 3 am and blasted music. It was quite exhausting and I felt very alienated from the whole thing.
Today we went back to Jerusalem to help with another protest in front of the Knesset. It was another exciting day which saw about 50 Bedouin standing and very actively chanting slogans. In fact, this was a much more active protest despite being smaller in numerical terms. I could just feel the raw intensity surging through the crowd.
Also of note, was the fact that several friends of Knesset came to show their support. I was able to hear one friend of Knesset be interviewed on Camera and speak about the interconnectedness of the Palestinian Issue and the Bedouin Issue and this seemed very interesting to me since I’d never really heard many Bedouin make that point.
This individual was incredibly potent as a speaker and talked about the addition of the Nakba to Israeli text books. I have seen the added sentence and do not feel it comes close to truly expressing the pain and anguish inflicted on the indigenous people of the nation, but even it is controversial. It just shows that the Jewish Israeli population at large is not ready to admit its collective guilt for the actions of its founding. Most Israelis would not even admit that there was a massive and systemic ethnic cleansing and transfer, let alone admit that it was unnecessary or in vain. The inability to admit this point makes a true peace difficult or impossible. Without admitting the guilt in causing the refugee crisis we can never accept any form of a right to return or view the piece process as anything but us giving in to a foe that has attacked us and hates us. This is blind and limited thinking.
I am enthralled by the concept of identity and think I want to write my paper on it. It seems that the identity of the Bedouin is complex and in flux. What part of Israeli or Palestinian identity can they claim and do they still maintain their Bedouin identity and how. These are the questions that truly pique my interest. It reminds me in many ways of the complex nature of Jewish identity today. I am an atheist but I would still call myself Jewish if I have to. This strange mix between religion, culture, ethnicity and nationhood is one of the more tricky concepts for non-jews to understand. Likewise, what defines and makes someone a Bedouin or not a Bedouin is incredibly tricky. If someone moves to Tel-Aviv can he still be called a Bedouin? This is a concept I am certainly going to continue to look into a research.
Leave a Reply