‘Liberation 75’ and my personal reflections from witnessing an occupation
This Saturday, 9 May 2020, we will see Jersey and Union flags flying proudly all around the island and although our celebrations will be curtailed by a new kind of enemy, in the form of a virus that has proved itself to be a silent but in many ways formidable one, this will not prevent us from reflecting on what five years of occupation under the German Nazi regime meant for islanders during those dark days of World War 2 and fascist Europe.
We will rightly remember and celebrate the brave, those who fought and sacrificed their lives for our freedom and the right to live with dignity, whether in the allied forces or those who joined the resistance in France and elsewhere. We will honour those in our island who risked their lives and for some, proved Jesus’ words in John 15:13 that: ‘there is no love greater than this, that a person would lay down his life for the sake of his friends’ by paying the ultimate price in order to shelter marginalised and targeted groups; our Jewish neighbours, Russian prisoners of war, English soldiers who found themselves stranded here, as well as other ‘undesirables’. We will sing songs that invoke nostalgia and now that dancing with someone outside of our household is currently ‘verboten’ due to the need for physical distancing, we shall imagine instead the carefully rehearsed swing routines of couples dressed in the fashions of the 40s.
Growing up in Jersey, occupation is very much part of your identity and indeed reminders of that occupation are never far away, scarring our landscape with its bunkers, war tunnels and in the poignant, heart breaking and also, yes, heartening stories still shared from those who endured it or their descendants.
When I was growing up in Jersey, I, like many other children, would take part in innocent games of ‘British and Germans’, not really understanding what this meant, only that you never wanted to be cast as a ‘German’. Every year at school, in the lead up to Liberation Day, there would always be related activities, whether drawing flags, dressing up, or learning songs, and we were always reminded of how precious our freedom was and how it was hard fought and won.
I am grateful for learning these lessons, but a personal journey I took a little under 2 years ago caused me to reflect more deeply than I ever had previously on what freedom and liberation is and means, and why I hold out the hope that we as islanders, the children and grandchildren of those who endured occupation and the liberators, can take a stand and advocate for those who continue to endure occupation, so that they too may experience the joy of freedom, liberation and a life that grants self-determination and dignity. There are many nations and peoples today enduring occupation, from Tibet to Kashmir, to Western Sahara and Kurdistan. I, however, will focus on Palestine, where I served 3 months as a human rights monitor in the autumn of 2018.
I will not go into the 100 year recent history of the region as there are many historians, such as Israeli academic, Ilan Pappe or Palestinian, Edward Said, who have done a far better job than I ever could in covering the journey to today. Instead, I would like to share with you a few moments that stand out for me during my period serving in the largest city in the West Bank, Hebron, and how they changed my life.
It is one of the most surreal journeys one can take when you get on a service bus in occupied East Jerusalem (a fact that is easily missed if you are not paying attention). A journey that takes you along roads where you can see down into the shopping mall of West Jerusalem, a mall that would not look out of place in any European city, and then drives you through a checkpoint into the West Bank, where you are hit by the immensity of the ‘barrier wall’, that looms 8 metres in places above you and snakes through and around Palestinian neighbourhoods; absorbing land like a hungry python.
Soon after crossing, you find yourself driving on the locally known ‘apartheid road’, because unlike the new, well-maintained ‘Settler Only’ road, your driver is having to navigate potholes and worn down tarmac. The scenery begins to rapidly change, alongside military watchtowers that bear down on the landscape every few hundred metres, you begin to see all manner of roadblocks, barbed wire fences, groups of soldiers with their guns positioned in their hands, ready, who may or may not stop your small passenger van. You begin to recognise very quickly which are the Palestinian homes and which are the homes of the illegal settlers. The Palestinian homes frequently run down, but always given away by the black water tanks that sit on the flat rooves. Israel, who controls access to all the land’s resources, uses the waters of the underground aquifers in the area and refuses to allow Palestinian neighbourhoods to access the mains water pipelines that have been laid to supply the illegal settlements.
On many of the journeys I took from Jerusalem to Hebron, I witnessed through the windows Palestinians frequently being stopped along the roadside by soldiers, forced to get out of their cars. At times there was shouting from the soldiers and Palestinian men, both young and old, who were shoved for reasons I could not discern. There was always the look of fear in children’s eyes, sometimes in the wives’, sister’s or mother’s, but at other times looks of defiance and determination which, as I collected my own experiences, would make me feel proud and give me a tangible understanding of what courage looked like.
The old city of Hebron for me is a microcosm of the Israeli occupation and apartheid system, aside from demolitions seen on an almost daily basis elsewhere in the West Bank, it experiences every aspect of what this unique form of occupation translates into in practice for the Palestinians. To enter the old city a visitor has the choice of going through Shuhada Street checkpoint (checkpoint 51), or by walking through the vegetable market into the old souk. Ultimately, if you want to access Il Ibrahimi Mosque — a mosque of significant historical importance as it is said to contain the tombs of Abraham and Sarah — or visit the adjacent neighbourhoods, you are going to need to go through at least one checkpoint, if not several.
Going through a checkpoint is the first time I can say I truly experienced my European privilege in a way that I could not ignore and to be honest it was uncomfortable. It was difficult to know how to both manage it or use it. Although at times I may, like others, have had to queue and wait for a period of time, should the soldiers have decided to not open the checkpoint, I always knew that aside from having to show my passport and answering a few questions; sometimes I think asked out of pure curiosity by bored young soldiers many of whom are just teenagers, I was always going to be let through with little fuss.
For Palestinians it is a much more complicated and humiliating affair. More times than I care to remember I observed both old men, barely hobbling and young men needing to take belts off, lift up shirts, trouser legs, being forced to turn around in front of the young soldiers, whether male or female, who often, from where I stood, seemed to find the process amusing or empowering, but not in a way that causes one to truly grow. I observed on other occasions, when the sun was beating down, as it generally does on the city, individuals or even couples made to stand in the full face of the burning sun like some endurance test.
I observed children carrying buckets and other containers of soup and food, given out on a daily basis by a local charity ‘Tikkeyet Saydna Ibraheem’, being made to wait for extended periods at the turnstiles as if to provide them with the full opportunity to reflect on how they drew one of the short straws in this great lottery of life and that theirs is not a life of choices, but one that is totally reliant on the mercy of others, as the local economy remains in the stranglehold of occupation and ethnically driven apartheid. This image haunted my mind during our recent partial ‘lockdown’ after observing photos of my young niece proudly holding cupcakes she had baked; it made me think how every child should get to bake cupcakes, or whatever sweet treat is desired in their culture.
The checkpoints that cross from the West Bank into what is now known as ‘Israel proper’ are even more fraught. Men of all ages queue from 3am in the hopes that they will be allowed, following making their way through the long, narrow and cramped metal cages, into Israel to undertake jobs they have been recruited for, providing an income that would otherwise be denied them as unemployment rates soar in Palestine. The West Bank provides a rich source of cheap labour for Israelis.
Each occasion I visited the checkpoint I saw 10s of Palestinian men, having made it to the desk of the facility run by a private international security firm, turned away for no known reason, their permits revoked without warning. We would provide them with details for the Israeli charity ‘Machsom Watch’; a small organisation predominantly made up of retired women who would try their best within the existing legal structure to find ways of removing any blocks a Palestinian may have on their ID card. At times, although they recognised why we were there and how we were trying to help, men would not even attempt to engage with us; perhaps their experiences had made them surrender to the likelihood of failure of any attempt to have their permits reinstated. The feelings of impotence I felt as I stood there weighed down on me, as if it was I that was wearing a soldier’s 100lb backpack.
There were times though at these checkpoints where I felt inspired, where I felt total gratitude and love for having had the experience and the lessons. These include the days when those prevented from going to pray at Il Ibrahimi Mosque broke out spontaneously in beautiful prayer, many with shining faces, smiling at us. The occasion when a man chose to use the humiliation of lifting up his shirt and having to turn, as an opportunity to demonstrate his strength of spirit in the face of oppression and smiled at us and wiggled as he turned, as if he were a model and I loved him for this. There were the times when people who have nothing, insisted on giving us sweet rolls, falafel and coffee, including two school age boys at 4am in the morning who just said “thank you” for being there; although being aware of the history of the British government involvement in the region made it a bittersweet moment. There were times when we succeeded in having the humanitarian gate opened for old Hebronites in wheelchairs or on crutches and the time when we managed to persuade a soldier to allow my young friend Mohammad to take his bike through.
There were too many days though during my time when there did not seem to be enough tears to cry, when a young unarmed father of several children was shot dead by soldiers and left to bleed to death where we had just visited. When another father, who we were informed by the local community had been suffering from severe depression — unsurprisingly a scourge in the area — had met the same fate, but on this occasion had had a pair of scissors, which he tried to attack a fully armed soldier with. The belief was that with suicide being ‘haram’ or forbidden in Islam, the soldiers would do the job for him, which, as expected, they obliged.
There was the recently created festival ‘Feast of Sarah’, when thousands of Zionist Jews from around the world and Israel descend upon Hebron and set up camp throughout the old city during which period Palestinian movement is restricted even further. During this holiday I observed Palestinians and their homes being attacked, beer bottles thrown at their houses in the only city in the West Bank where alcohol is prohibited. I observed groups of Jews who adhere to the extremist ideology of ‘Kahanism’ chanting racist slogans and overthrowing the tables of wares of Palestinian businesses in the souk. I witnessed a drunk settler climb over the fence into the locked in Palestinian neighbourhood of Al Salaymeh, when the Palestinians who felt threatened by the 1000s of settlers chanting stood up, soldiers climbed over and ran after the Palestinians. I later found out that several Palestinians, including a young boy, had ended up in hospital with injuries as a consequence of the soldier and settler brutality.
There was the day when I saw a settler ‘rev up’ his car and then try to run over two young children, one of about three and the other around 18 months. I managed to grab one child as the grateful father grabbed the other. Another day, I heard that a beautiful young boy that I had befriended, Montasseh, was admitted into hospital having also been the target of a settler ‘hit and run’. I was so grateful when I got to visit him upon release, and although he had a limp, there was no permanent damage, physically at least.
So many occasions and situations I witnessed in Palestine that made me fail to understand the inhumanity of humans and to comprehend what this was all for. Who really stood to benefit from any of this in the long run? As it clearly destroys the social and moral fabric of a society and community. I began to recognise that Palestinians were not the only victims, although of course the wounds inflicted are different. I saw soldiers who were clearly troubled by what they were being asked to do and some of these would try to find ways of being more humane in an inhumane situation. One was a soldier who helped an old Palestinian man climb up steep, stone stairs and whose partner, after asking for permission, allowed me to take a photograph. I heard the stories of whistleblowers from ‘Breaking the Silence’ who frequently give tours in the area and who themselves are attacked by settlers, deemed traitors.
I heard an insightful talk by Israeli peace activist, Ruth Hiller, who explained to us the damage that a militarised society has done to Israeli children, and I learned that the Israeli army has one of the highest suicide rates of any military. Occupation and apartheid demands and exacts a price, not just from the population it subdues, but from its own population that it asks to do the subduing.
Yes, my experience was life changing; I saw the best and worst of humanity. I saw evil, but I also saw the purest love; I saw cowardice from people holding guns and I saw the courage of children and old people standing, and at times sitting in front of army vehicles.
My reflections on occupation, freedom and liberation are this: that no matter who the perpetrator, occupation is a disease that damages the occupier as much, but in a different way, as the occupied and because of this it translates into the occupier denying themselves the opportunity of being truly free or liberated. They are imprisoned by their ideologies, false histories and narratives they are forced to tell themselves to somehow try to make sense of it all and to justify standing there with guns in their hands pointed at an unarmed civilian population.
I have come to understand that the struggle for freedom and liberation doesn’t just live in our past, they are battles still taking place for so many today, this day, when we dance, when we sing, we pray and share stories. That we should never feel that these rights are ours alone, they are, always were and should always be, the fundamental rights of every human on this planet we share.
Because whether we like it or not, our futures are inextricably linked and as Dr Martin Luther King Jr. alluded to far more eloquently than I will now, that until we are all free and liberated, oppression is a concept and experience that will remain acceptable, and therefore it is only a matter of time until it will be our community’s turn again. With that in mind, I would like to invite every person of conscience this, our Liberation Day, to join me in demanding and working towards a principled freedom for all, one based on true justice and equality, one that will truly liberate us.
(The contents within this article are the express views and opinions of the writer and do not represent the views or opinions of any organisation)
